The role of emotional intelligence in service encounters: A model for predicting the effects of employee-customer interactions on consumer attitudes, intentions, and behaviours

Understanding how employees influence customer behaviour in a service encounter has important implications for the selection and training of employees. To date, however, the issue of how employees influence consumer behaviour has been largely overlooked. This paper aims to address the current theoretical gap by incorporating the literature on emotional intelligence into the context of employee-customer interactions. Specifically, a model is developed in which employees' exhibition of emotional intelligence behaviours, termed emotional competence, is presented as a critical variable moderating the link between service encounters and consumer attitudes, intentions, and behaviours