The Effect of Emotional Intelligence Training on the Service Quality of Mellat Bank Branches

The subject of emotional intelligence has attracted the attention of many organizational managers and scholars in recent decade. The possibility of developing this type of intelligence has motivated many organizations to conduct EI training programs for their employees. This study tends to examine the effect of EI training program on the service quality of Mellat bank branches. In This study, 10 branches of the bank were chosen as the research sample (five as the experiment and five as the control group). In the Pre-test phase EI level of the control group (using ECI test) and service quality of both experiment and control groups (using SERVEPERF test) were measured. Then an eight-session EI training program was conducted for each branch of the control group (having a total of 69 employees) for a period of two months. In the post test phase EI level of the trained employees and also service quality of all the sample branches were measured once more. Results show that the EI level of the experiment group and its service quality have had meaningful improvements while service quality of the control group branches has not had a meaningful improvement. It could be concluded that Iranian public banks could invest on developing their employees’ EI and this would lead to improved service quality.