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Republic of Tunisia Institute of Languages of Gabes

Ministry of Higher Education English Department

And Scientific Research 2021-2022

Emotional Intelligence

In Customers Services and Its Impact on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty:

Financial institutions in Ghomrassen as a Case Study.

Research Proposal

Submitted by: Malek Guerrida Supervised by: Dr. Rym Ezzina

2021-2022
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1. Background to the study

Emotional Intelligence also referred to as EI or EQ (Emotional Quotient), is the ability

to recognize, understand and manage your own and others’ emotions effectively. Historically,

the first who coined the term Emotional Intelligence are two American Professors Mayer and

Salovey (1990), who discovered that some people seemed to be better than others when it

comes to identifying others’ feelings and solving problems involving Emotional issues, they

also seemed to be better at identifying their feelings.

The discovery of this concept paved the way for many other researchers to further

explore Emotion Intelligence. Daniel Goleman, the American psychologist, is probably one of

the most widely recognized because he associated Emotional Intelligence with the workplace

setting and highlighted its importance to business success (Goleman,1995), this investigation

paved the way for many enterprises to apply Emotional Intelligence in the workplace.

Nowadays, the workplace represents a distinctive social community separate from our

personal lives in which there is a growing appreciation that higher EI allows a person to

understand themselves and others better, communicate more effectively, and cope with

challenging situations, increasingly organizations recognize the value of employees who

exhibit Emotional Intelligence skills to cope with changes and respond accordingly. Thus, EI

is an important factor in job performance both at the individual level and the group level,

individuals with higher EI are better equipped to effectively manage conflict and in turn

sustain relationships within the workplace, when compared to those with low EI.

In recent years, the concept of Emotional Intelligence in the workplace has gained

special attention in academic studies, many recent investigators have been conducting to

describe the application of EI within enterprises between managers and employees and to
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determine its importance in maintaining organizational benefits (Lam, Higgins 2012).

However, the application of Emotional Intelligence in terms of employee’s customers

relationship and its importance in maintaining customers’ loyalty and satisfaction are still not

much explored yet especially in the Tunisian context. Thus, this research will fill these gaps.

Accordingly, this investigation will attempt to identify and describe the existence of

Emotional Intelligence in customer service in the context of Tataouine, Ghomrassen and

analyze the impacts of applying EI on customer loyalty and satisfaction.

2. Problem Statement

Identifying and analyzing the existence of Emotional Intelligence within enterprises are

essential for organizational effectiveness. Thus, understanding its application in customer

service is important to evaluate the quality of services provided by the employees and to

determine customers' loyalty and satisfaction. In this context, this investigation seeks to

identify the different variables that can impact either positively or negatively EI in customer

service in Ghomrassen and analyze how higher EI can lead to customers’ loyalty and

satisfaction.

3. Research Objectives

This research aims to :

• Identifying the existence of Emotional Intelligence in two financial institutions in

Ghomrassen

• Comparing the customer service providers in the two different financial institutions

• Exploring the importance of EI in determining customers' loyalty and satisfaction.

• Understanding how customers’ emotions can impact the relationship between the customer

service providers and the customers.

4. Research questions
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The proposed research aims to answer the following questions:

• How to measure Emotional Intelligence in the customer service ?

• What are the main differences between the application of EI in the public and the private

sector in Ghomrassen?

• What are the factors that may determine customers' loyalty and satisfaction?

• Do customers’ emotions affect the services provided by the employees?

5. Research Design

Burns & Grave (2003) define a research design as a blueprint of conducting a study

with maximum control over factors that may interfere it the validity of findings, in shorts it is

a plan of the proposed research work (Achtar,2016).This research will be structured as

follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This preliminary chapter, will provide a general background to the study, introduce the

research field, state the topic of investigation and the problem statement, it will also illustrate

the research objectives, the research questions, and the blueprint of the thesis.

Chapter 2: literature review

This chapter will be organized thematically as follows: It will involve the main themes

the thesis seeks to investigate, each theme will include definitions about the key terms, review

of last research conducted in its context. The central themes that will be described within this

chapter are:

• Emotional Intelligence (self-awareness, emotional control, empathy, and relationship

skills).

• Customer Service (job performance, relationship quality, customer value and customer

satisfaction and loyalty).

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• Communication (customers’ services and face-to-face communication).

This passage will also comprise the contribution of the answers to the field of research.

Chapter 3: Methodology

This chapter will encompass the research methodology of the dissertation. In more

detail, it will consist of the research strategy, the research methods, the research approach, and

the method of data collection, the selection of the sample, the research process, the type of

data analysis, and the rationale behind the research.

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Findings

This chapter will focus on processing and analyzing the data collected in a manner that

answers the research questions and objectives. Technically speaking, the processing implies

editing, coding, classifying, and tabulation of the collected data so that they are capable of

analysis and interpreting, it will also determine, compare and discuss the findings of the

research.

Chapter 5: Conclusion

This final chapter will involve the main points discussed throughout the entire paper,

describe the implications of the results, show the limitations of the research and open for

further investigations about the field of study.

6. Methodology :

Research methodology simply refers to the practical “how” of any given piece of

research, more specifically it answers four major questions what data to collect? Who to

collect it from? How to collect it? And how to analyze it? This research is conducted to study

emotional intelligence in customer services, test the relationship between emotional

intelligence and customer satisfaction and loyalty in customer service from two selected

financial institutions in Ghomrassen, then we will if this relationship is mediated by the

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emotional intelligence of customers or employees and finally we will test what moderates this

relationship (age, gender, or emotions )of the customers or (competence, job experience, or

emotions)of the employees.

a. Purpose of the Study :

There are two purposes of research either exploratory or explanatory. Both purposes

have distinctive characteristics and differences from others, in exploratory research, the

purpose is to explore the untapped and less discovered areas, whereas explanatory purpose

emphasized less explained areas or feeble dimensions and domains ( Cooper, Schindler, &

Sun, 2006), henceforth in this study we will use explanatory purpose to identify and analyze

emotional intelligence in customer service in the context of Ghomrassen, Tataouine and

explain the relationship between emotional intelligence and customer satisfaction and loyalty.

b. Research Approach :

This study will incorporate a mixed-method approach that includes quantitative and

qualitative approaches. Qualitative research deals with words and emphasizes non-statistical

tools and techniques for data analysis, whereas the quantitative approach deals with numbers

and usually involves statistical tools and techniques for data analysis (Veal, 2005 ), the current

study has both quantifiable objectives that need statistical techniques for data analysis like the

measurement of emotional intelligence and also has qualitative objectives that need

nonstatistical tools for data analysis like analyzing and comparing emotions, therefore, it

decisively to use a mixed-method approach.

c. Data Collection :

This section presents the used tools to gather the necessary information to answer the

research questions, there are multiple tools for collecting data, but in this investigation, data

will be collected throughout the questionnaire, interviews, and observation as primary data
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since they add validity and quality to the research, also we will use some previous research in

the same context which is secondary data.

 Questionnaire: is a quantitative tool for data collection, it is a set of printed or written

questions with a choice of answers, devised for surveys of statistical studies, there are three

types of questionnaires structured, unstructured, and scaled questionnaires. In this research, we

will opt for a structured questionnaire composed of close-ended questions since the researcher

spend 2 months of training in the research setting (Appendices 3) it was accessible for her to

collect customers’ emails and distribute online questionnaires and also 54 the customers at

door, it is more flexible to make a structured questionnaire for quicker response from the

participants, the questionnaire will be divided into three major parts: personnel information,

customer satisfaction, and WLEIS test (Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, 2002) to

measure to what extent customers are emotionally intelligent.

 Interview: is a qualitative tool for data collection, used to collect data from a small group

of subjects on a broad range of topics, there are three types of interviews are structured, semi

structured, and unstructured. In this research, we will opt for structured interviews or planned

interviews in which we will create a set of close-ended questions that will be answered by the

employees, since the interviews will be taken place in the work location we opt for structured

close-ended interviews for quicker responses. the interviews will be divided into 2 major parts

one about personal information and the other about the emotional intelligence test.

 Observation: as the name implies, it is a way of collecting data through observing, the

researchers adopting this method attempt to understand behaviors and societies by getting to

know the persons involved and their values, rituals, symbols, beliefs, and emotions. Since we

deal with Emotional Intelligence, observation is suitable as a data collection technique, there
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are two types of observation participant observation or complete observation, in this research

we will use complete observation in which the researchers are not part of the phenomenon

they are just observers, and their identification is canceled, the people who are observing do

not know that we are researchers .Since emotions are conveyed through verbal/nonverbal

communication we need to observe and semiotically analyze both employees and customers.

d. Target Population :

According to Mugenda &Mugenda (2003) population refers to an entire group of

individuals, events, or objects having common observable characteristics, for them the Target

population. For this study, the target populations are the customers and the employees in the

customer services of two selected financial institutions in Ghomrassen.

e. Sample Size and Sampling Techniques:

A sample according to Kuma (2004), is a small portion of the total population from

which information be obtained, there are two types of sampling techniques non-probability

and probability sampling, nonprobability sample means that the researcher uses a non-random

sample whereas, probability sampling means that the researcher uses a completely random

sample from the group of people that his interested in, in this research, we will opt for

probability sampling since we will select our sample from two financial institutions we will

expect to have the same results across the entire group of other financial institutions in

Ghomrassen, thus, the same sample size will be selected in the two financial institutions (50

from the first and 50 from the second one )this equal selection will be used to compare the

results between the two financial institutions.

f. Data Analysis Techniques :

Data analysis describes the entire process of organizing, analyzing, and summarizing

raw data to produce meaningful information (Gandeebo, 2015). In this study, we will use the
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software Statistical Package for Social Sciences version (SPSS), which helped to analyze,

summarize and interpret quantitative data, for qualitative data we will use thematic analysis

which takes bodies of data and groups them according to similarities in other words, theme,

these themes will help us to make sense of the content and derive meaning from it.

References:

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emotional intelligence to the workplace. New Brunswick, NJ: Consortium for

Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, Rutgers University.

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