A Measurement of Emotional Intelligence in Service Encounters

Abstract

The concept of Emotional Intelligence appears to be able to provide the premise to describe customer aptitude in managing emotions elicited in a service exchange, as well as provide the precedential link to understand customer affective responses. However, given that research in the commercial implications of emotional intelligence has focused predominantly in management literature, no widely accepted scale has yet been developed to assess implications of customer's emotional intelligence in a service context. This paper outlines the development of a new measure, the Customer Emotional Intelligence Scale (CEIS), an adaptation of the Workplace Emotional Intelligence Profile version 3 (WEIP-3) which was designed to profile the emotional intelligence of customers in the context of service encounters. Empirical investigation conducted in the context of service industry supported multidimensionality of the CEIS. Discussion in this paper focuses on the application of the scale in services marketing while outlining avenues for future research.