The Board Chair of the West African Association of Customer Service Professionals, Yvonne Ohui MacCarthy, has categorically said: “Customer service is all about acting, sometimes. You have to put on an act to make the customer happy.”

She acknowledged juggling the various aspects of one’s personal life and professional lives could take its toll, impacting one's customer service delivery.

However, apart from being considerate in dealing with customers, since they could very much be dealing with similar or even worse problems, she said it was imperative to give emotional intelligence/quotient (EQ) due focus.

The lead consultant at the Institute of Customer Service Professionals (ICSP) said: “One of the most important building blocks of any serious customer service representative is emotional intelligence.”

To practise and master emotional intelligence beyond sloganeering, she advised “self-awareness” to know “what triggers us, what our emotions are, what we’re unhappy with, and at what point to leave”.

Furthermore, Yvonne MacCarthy underlined emotional intelligence went beyond learning to control one’s own emotions.

“You also have to have the ability to influence the emotions of others,” she explained.

Since “you never know what a customer is coming to you with,” she emphasised emotional intelligence was “a skill we have to inculcate, something we have to learn”.

To recruiters and employers, the Board Chair of the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC) Client Service Committee said: “There are questions around emotional intelligence we need to be asking during interviews just to make sure we have people who are emotionally mature to serve and face our customers”.

Yvonne MacCarthy has trained representatives of diverse organisations including banks, embassies, etc. She is the creator of the revolutionary Ghana Customer Service Index (GCSI).

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