Decoding Emotional Intelligence in Customer Research: A Bibliometric Study of Global Scholarly Trends

This study aims to examine global scholarly trends, intellectual structure and emerging themes in Emotional Intelligence (EI) in customer research with emphasis on the growing integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), emotionally responsive technologies and digital customer interaction environments. A bibliometric analysis was conducted using 464 journal articles retrieved from the Scopus database from 2001 to 2025. A systematic screening process was applied using predefined inclusion criteria, including English-language journal articles at the final publication stage. The analysis identified major publication trends, influential publication sources, leading authors, geographical research contributions, prominent keyword networks, and emerging thematic directions shaping EI research within customer contexts. The findings reveal a substantial increase in publications after 2020, reflecting growing scholarly interest in emotionally intelligent customer interaction and AI-enabled service technologies. EI and AI emerged as dominant themes, highlighting a transition from traditional emotional labour research toward hybrid human-AI service ecosystems. The analysis identified influential publication sources, leading scholarly contributors, international research participation, and interconnected thematic clusters centred on customer satisfaction, customer experience, empathy, service quality, chatbots, emotion recognition, and AI-mediated customer interactions. Emerging research directions further indicate increasing attention to emotionally responsive technologies, service robots, and intelligent customer engagement systems.