Missed our Global Frontline Experience Summit 2022? It was pretty awesome but don’t worry, all of the powerful sessions are available right here!
Who we heard from:
Meet Sandra Thompson - Customer and Employee Experience Educator and Tedx Speaker. Her superpower? Improving customer and employee experience.
Sandra believes that customer experiences and life-long learning are better designed, delivered and improved with the support of the sciences (neuroscience, behavioural science and psychology).
The BIG idea:
Emotional intelligence is a must have skill for successful managers. Sandra talked both about what it is and why businesses who focus on it experience increased revenues and greater staff engagement, ultimately becoming industry leaders.
Let’s dive in:
He forgot his anniversary… again?!
You know the story well. A florist working late; a panicked call by a customer desperate for a bouquet to mark the occasion he’d accidentally forgotten about. In this particular instance, Sandra relates how the florist reassured the man that he wasn’t the only one who had rung up in a panic that day. She then presented a few clever options, including ringing around for a late-night delivery; delivering the next day; or even (if he needed her to) calling his partner and apologising for forgetting to deliver the bouquet as ordered. After agreeing on next-day delivery, she went a step further and offered to diarise all future special occasions for automatic floral delivery - taking care of any future relationship mishaps in one foul swoop.
She went the ‘extra mile’ - based on what’s known as emotional intelligence.
explains Sandra.
Unpacking what it is…
Simply put, emotional intelligence is the ability to gauge how others are feeling and the inherent ability to assess what you need to do to make it better. It’s ‘cognitive’ (I can sense how you feel); ‘emotional’ (I understand how you feel); and then takes it that step further by saying: “I am going to act on that to make it better!”
To find out more: Read about the 12 elements of emotional intelligence in the HBR
