People skills, soft skills, and empathy all fall into the scientific study of Emotional Intelligence. As a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner when Steve Kraus of Cogito was talking about supporting agents in real-time with their speaking behavior to build better rapport with customers I was thrilled.
This is the first time I have seen an artificial intelligence solution be used as a proactive tool to analyze non-verbal behaviors and provide real-time feedback to agents to augment their emotional intelligence and help them to communicate in a more productive manner.
Needless to say, Cogito was the only solution in expo hall at Call Center Week Winter offering such a tool. But this is a space that I expect will see more competition in the near future.
Watch Steve Kraus of Cogito talk real-time Emotional Intelligence at Call Center Week Winter with Jim Rembach Click to Tweet
What Cogito Does
Cogito Corporation enhances the emotional intelligence of phone professionals through behavioral change software. By applying validated behavioral science through artificial intelligence and machine learning, Cogito’s in-call guidance helps the world’s most successful enterprises improve sales results, deliver amazing customer experiences and enhance quality of care. Source: http://www.cogitocorp.com/
Emotional Intelligence is the New Battleground
Customer experience is all about emotion. Both positive and negative emotions will be shared and remembered and influence our subconscious mind. Design the customer experience using emotions and you’ll be way ahead of your competition.
The use of Emotional Intelligence in customer experience design is rapidly increasing in number as organizations approach the differentiation through experience era. “In just a few years 89% of businesses will compete mainly on customer experience.” -Gartner
Organizations can no longer use postmortem information to make adjustments to the customer experience and expect to win. They have to make adjustments in real-time and work to evoke the desired customer outcome using positive emotion.
In an article titled The Essence of Emotional Intelligence for Customer Experience by Kate Nasser she shares that in product design, web site usage, mobile access, and customer service interaction, customers are consciously and subconsciously deciding if it’s positive for them. Emotional intelligence about their needs and views feeds business success.
Emotional Connections Generate Revenue
Having a human connection with customers is your goal. Why? When cosmetics giant L’Oreal wanted to make a dramatic shift in their sales force, they decided to recruit and higher agents that had exceptionally high emotional intelligence levels. The resulting increase in profits exceeded 2.5 million dollars.
Creating an emotional connection with a customer drives higher customer experience ratings. “Some of the industry leaders include JetBlue in the airline industry, USAA in financial services, Apple in PC manufacturers and Lexus in automotive. A ‘happy customer’ does not correlate with brand loyalty. The top three drivers for loyalty are making customers feel valued, appreciated and confident.” Forbes, July 2016.
Customers feeling valued, appreciated, and confident (or trust in you) is a result of effectively applying emotional intelligence. And in contact centers the opportunity to leverage emotional intelligence in 50 to 150 customer interactions per day represents an opportunity for millions in annual revenue gains.
Use your IQ and engage your EQ
This might not be mainstream to our industry – but think about the opportunity.
You don’t want to be Blockbuster and miss the opportunity to transform into Netflix. You don’t want to be that cab company that didn’t make their own Uber App. You don’t want to be that company that failed to leverage the power of emotional intelligence and lost to your competition.
The power of emotional intelligence is proven. There are hundreds of case studies reporting positive results. Now the next evolution of EQ is here. We now have technology that can help to effectively foster emotional intelligence and deliver it at scale.
