CH A P T E R ON E

Introduction

Last night, Melanie Jones had another late night at the Call Center. Early
in the evening, she overhead one of her direct reports (a Customer Service
Rep) shouting at one of the company’s best customers, Nuts Galore. The
rep was not even coming close to being cooperative and could not under-
stand the customer’s needs, let alone solve the customer’s problem. After
overhearing the conversation, Melanie recalled a recent class she had taken
on the subject of Emotional Intelligence (EI). She had spent the past sev-
eral weeks trying to understand why her department was not improving,
and Melanie wondered if her staff really had the EI to understand how to
listen to and understand their customers’ concerns.
The following morning, Melanie came in early and got all her super-
visors together. She asked for each of them to share their best customer
service experience along with their worst customer service experiences.
The “worst” experiences came quite easily from the team. It took a lit-
tle longer for the “best” examples to come to mind, but with time, they
ended with quite a list. Melanie explained to the supervisors that people
expect good customer service, so recalling good examples was a bit more
difficult. Melanie then shared what she overheard the previous night.
This analogy “hit home” with her supervisors. Once Melanie was able to
convey tangible examples to her supervisors, she was able to make them
understand that it was up to them, as a team, to solve the problems and to
help the entire customer service staff to improve.
After brainstorming as a team, each supervisor offered to “interview”
a random sample of Customer Service Reps (CSR) and customers. The
input from the CSR’s and customers was recorded, and the Training
Manager put the feedback into a presentation. The feedback was col-
lected from a wide range of experiences, from happy customers to furious
customers.
Melanie invited top management as well as the Customer Service Reps
and a focus group of volunteer customers to come to a special meeting at
the end of the week. The customers voiced their experiences, both pos-
itive and negative, as well as their expectations. Ideas and examples of

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