Partner, EQ International Perspectives; former VP of Human Resources, The Marriott Corporation (US). Speaker Web Site John Avella MA, Ed.D. (abd) Partner, EQ International Perspectives; former VP of Human Resources, The Marriott Corporation (US). Session Information: Teaching Customer Service People to be Emotionally Competent to Develop Customer Loyalty. Key Concepts: Emotional competence and its value in connecting to the Customer. Realize the power of EQ and it's application to Customer service. Customer satisfaction is not good enough any more, Customer loyalty is the success factor in the Customer interaction process and is only achieved through an emotional connection. The service industry is the industry of the present and the future. The presentation recognizes the value of emotions in the Customer service experience. Through research will address the link from emotions to Customer loyalty. Will explore research into how adults learn emotional intelligence especially in the area of readiness to change/learn and transfer of learning to the work environment (preparing the work environment for the new skill set of Emotional Competence). The presenter will show how the research was used in the training process design. The presenter will review the actual results and outcomes from various implementations of the training process. This research study was used for a Doctoral dissertation at Columbia University.