This Study Shows Whether 'Always Smiling' Attitude Is Right In Face-To-Face Encounters With Customers

Non-verbal communication plays vital role in face-to-face conversations. Success in business largely depends on establishing and maintaining relationships. Picard et al. (2009), conducted an experiment to examine the role of smiling in face to face encounters to establish relationship. In this experiment, service providers were asked to manipulate their facial expressions while interacting with customers. Two professional bankers were hired as service providers to explain financial services to 37 customers. Customers were told that their voice and face would be recorded for security reasons, but they were unaware of the fact that their facial expressions were being analyzed by researchers. 

Bankers manipulated their expression in following three conditions: In neutral conditions, bankers tried to put on a neutral facial expression; in smiling conditions, bankers tried to put on a smiling facial expression throughout the interaction; and in empathetic conditions, bankers tried to react with the same smiling or complimentary facial expressions. 

Customer satisfaction depends on how customers perceive attitude of service provider. It was found that the customer satisfaction was greater in case of empathetic conditions rather than neutral or smiling conditions. 

Customers perceived service provider as an empathetic, when they shared genuine smiles more often and for a longer time. This shows that giving complementary facial expressions and genuinely smiling together with customers helps to make customer’s experience more enjoyable. So, note down: The ‘always smiling’ attitude is not effective while closing your potential buyers.

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Reference – 
Kyunghee Kim, Micah Eckhardt, Nandi Bugg, and Rosalind Picard from MIT Media Laboratory, 20 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. 
Research paper name - The benefits of synchronized genuine smiles in face-to-face service encounters. 
Published In - International conference on Computational Science and Engineering (2009).

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