PART TWO
CHOOSING EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE
We see things not as they are.
We see things as we are.
—Anais Nin
Organizations have a choice about how they view their service relationships. Some see service as little more than a necessary evil, while others view service relationships as the magnet that keeps customers coming back over and over again. Some see service as emotional labor; others choose to view it as emotional competence.
In today’s world, high-tech companies charge for service, even offering different packages for different levels of service. Airlines have long done this with coach-class, business-class, and first-class distinctions. The assumption these companies make is that service competency has intrinsic value and can be charged for. While businesses may not be able to advertise a specific charge for added emotional value in the same way that high-tech companies can enumerate a price for twenty-four-hour service or airlines for the lay-back seats in first class, it is a memorable component of the customer experience and therefore has value.
It is not an easy task for organizations to create a culture of emotional competency and link that to customer service, but it is a competitive edge—especially in the developing experience economy. It does not happen by accident and requires full support from management to ensure that emotional competency is chosen as the foundation for the organization’s service philosophy.
Emotional Labor: 1. requiring staff to produce an emotional reaction in the customer, such as satisfaction or delight; 2. employing voice or facial interaction with customers; 3. requiring staff to display a set of emotions that differs from the emotions they feel.
A nineteenth-century child working in a brutalizing English wallpaper factory and a well-paid twentieth-century American flight attendant have something in common: in order to survive in their jobs, they must mentally detach themselves—the factory worker from his own body and physical labor, and the flight attendant from her own feelings and emotional labor.1
—Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart
Emotional Competence: 1. knowing one’s emotions; 2. managing emotions; 3. motivating oneself; 4. recognizing emotions in others; 5. handling relationships.
On the positive side, imagine the benefits for work of being skilled in the basic emotional competencies—being attuned to the feelings of those we deal with, being able to handle disagreements so they do not escalate, having the ability to get into flow states while doing our work.2
—Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence