Enhancing Emotional Intelligence in Call Centre Agents with AI

For any business owner operating a call centre, consistency is one of the most challenging aspects of the process. It is important to keep your agents consistent in how they talk to and interact with the customers who call up. We have all heard horror stories of people having to hang up on one call centre agent so they can be redirected to someone more helpful or empathetic about the situation.

Training staff to ensure they can provide the correct level of emotional intelligence is not easy. It costs large quantities of time, effort, and company resources to make this possible. Thus, any company that prioritises emotional intelligence in their staff should look for the most cost-effective ways to do this without compromising quality.

Today, there is much buzz about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) – could AI be the cost-effective step-in to help enhance the emotional intellect of call centre agents?

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

Verywellmind defines emotional intelligence as “the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, evaluate, and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively.” – that should make it easy to see why emotional intelligence is so important in a call centre operative.

Emotional intelligence allows us to be more in control of our emotions. For example, an angry customer calls up unreasonably amid complaints over something minuscule. Many call centre agents can find themselves bristling at the tone and attitude of the individual. Understanding why they are so upset can prevent the agent from reacting in a way that might inflame the situation.

Someone can develop and grow their emotional intelligence cache through regular training and support. It does, though, require much time and effort to make this possible. Ensuring that your customer-face agents can understand the customer’s emotions can lead to a much better level of support.

The result? Less upset staff because they can stay in control of their emotions. And, crucially, customers will be more satisfied as they speak with call centre specialists who can help them remain calm and overcome whatever the situation they are dealing with happens to be.

Improving Emotional Intelligence In Call Centre Staff

Emotional intelligence comes in many forms, but some of the most important aspects of emotional intellect include, but are not limited to:

• Relationship Management. One key aspect of emotional intelligence is making sure that we can maintain healthy and genuine relationships with people. This means speaking our minds clearly and truthfully and listening to others to help resolve conflicts.
• Personal Influence. Another aspect of emotional intelligence that matters is the ability to influence others. Those with strong emotional intellect can empathise with others, get on their emotional level, and help build positive connections that inspire results.
• Diverging Perspectives. One of the clearest signs of someone lacking emotional intelligence is their ability to look at the world from other perspectives. Understanding that someone might hold a differing viewpoint without creating an argument is a vital skill.
• Self-Regulation. A key skill for anyone, especially those in a call centre, is to self-regulate. Staff might want to give customers peace of mind, but what does that resolve? Handling stressful discussions and disputes is vital for any operative on the floor.
• Impulse Control. Again, it might be an impulse to put the phone down on a rude customer or supplier. However, that will resolve nothing and instead create more problems. Instead, impulse control can stop a staff member from saying something they might regret.
• Self-Awareness. Lastly, a crucial aspect of emotional intelligence for call centre staff includes their ability to be self-aware. Understanding what sets them off emotionally and how to work around those triggers can be a vital skill to help improve interactions and work more effectively.

Can AI Improve Call Centre Agents’ Emotional Intellect?

Yes, with the right tools, a call centre agent can become more in tune with what is expected of them regarding modern emotional intelligence. They can be given support through AI to help them notice when they are overstepping the mark. It can help them become more aware of what kind of responses they should be given based on the feedback provided by the AI software.

These tools ensure that call centre staff can become more aware by seeing the results. By analysing things like call centre transcripts from customer interactions, staff can clearly understand emotion and sentiment analysis of how their emotional intelligence comes through when talking to partners and customers.

This is useful as it can give your call centre agents a more gamified approach to improving their emotional intellect. This can deliver a more positive result and level of feedback, and it can also drive better performance simply by giving our staff clear guidelines for what they can improve upon. With AI analysis on all call centre transcripts, for example, staff can learn from the staff in the most control of their emotions.

This makes it easier for staff to improve their emotional intellect simply by learning from the example set by others. This will likely help make calls more efficient, avoid anger building in staff, and reduce employee turnover as you bring in staff who can handle the emotional intensity of being a customer service representative.

Help Agents Stay On Top Of Emotional Intelligence Training

Companies investing in such a tool can find the perfect AI training via Awaken. This platform offers access to all of the tools needed to help reduce staff churn by guiding them through their emotional intelligence training. This is great for ensuring that staff can become more confident in dealing with tough situations and learn about the best ways to control their emotions.

By being able to see a clear example of how they are dealing with customers, call centre agents can become more aware of where they need to focus their time and effort. Eventually, tools like Awaken will help ensure that the staff who learn from their emotional intelligence training are far more capable of coming through difficult situations in a way that does not aggravate the condition or cause their emotions to boil over.

Emotional intelligence training through AI provides company-specific, real-time support to all call centre agents. Invest in this today via Awaken for the best chance to see rapid results.