Trust is essential for building customer relationships that lead to long-term loyalty. However, creating this trust requires a high level of emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others. It’s the basis of all social skills and is reflected in our behavior.
A business needs to understand its customers emotionally to build rapport and offer an excellent customer experience. You must know your customers' needs well and act with their best interests at heart. All of this requires high EQ.
How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
Emotional intelligence is a skill you can learn and improve. The first step is to take an emotional intelligence assessment.
This is a test that asks questions to reveal your level of EQ. It’s a diagnostic tool that can shed light on your self-awareness, control of your emotions, and motivators. The results show where you have gaps to improve and what social skills to work on.
EQ tests are available online from sites like Psychology Today or Mind Tools. A simple, free assessment is enough to get you started on where to improve.
Improve Your Self-Awareness
You can improve your EQ by being more aware of your thoughts and feelings. When you know yourself, you can better control your behavior, especially in negative situations. This can be helpful, for example, when dealing with an unhappy customer or making a difficult decision.
You can increase your self-awareness by:
l Writing in a journal each day, describing what happened and how you feel about it
l Actively seeking feedback from others to learn how they see you
l Identifying your core values and key motivators
l Examining the triggers that make you react emotionally
l Taking up a practice like mindful meditation.
Practice Empathy
Understanding your customers’ outlook and showing some empathy is vital. Your customers need to feel heard for you to build a trusting relationship. Listening well helps you learn more about them and empathize. It also shows them you care.
Active listening can help you improve your empathy. This is a communication technique where you repeat back to the speaker what they’ve said in your own words to summarize, confirm your understanding, and show you’re listening.
Learn about Your Audience
Get to know your audience well. Research your audience members to find out as much as possible about them, paying close attention to their emotions. Gain an understanding of their core values, pain points, and the feelings that motivate them. You can then find ways to build a stronger emotional connection.
Emotional Intelligence Leads to Better Understanding
High emotional intelligence puts you in control so you can manage your own feelings and behaviors. It also helps you better understand your audience members to create a strong connection with them that will lead to trust.
Want to learn more about getting your target audience to know, like, and trust you? Head over here: The KLT Factor
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