How to Inculcate Empathy in Your Customer Service Culture

In my opinion, the single most important skill for a customer service professional, or anybody working in a customer-facing role, is empathy. Everything else – time management, upselling & cross-selling skills, product knowledge, comes next. In fact, I ran a poll on a popular CX community asking people what they think is a more important skill for agents to have – 

When a customer reaches out to you, they’re asking for your help because a product or a service they paid for, is causing them some trouble or hasn’t been able to meet their expectations. So it’s very likely that they’re unhappy and dissatisfied. In such a state, they want a human to hear them out and understand their problem. 

A support rep with the ability to empathize with the customer will be able to put themselves in their shoes and figure out the best possible solution. 

In this blog, I’ll be talking about how you can develop a culture of empathy in your customer service team. 

What is customer empathy?

Customerempathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of a customer. It involves seeing things from the customer’s perspective, recognizing their emotions, and responding in a way that makes them feel heard and valued.

Empathy in customer service is more than just solving problems; it’s about connecting with customers on a human level. When service professionals demonstrate empathy, they show that they care about the customer’s experience and are genuinely interested in helping them. 

It can help you in:

• Understanding Customer Needs: By putting themselves in the customer’s shoes, service professionals can better grasp the customer’s needs and concerns, leading to more effective and personalized solutions.
  
• Building Trust and Rapport: When customers feel understood, they are more likely to trust the service professional and feel comfortable sharing their issues. This trust can foster stronger, long-lasting relationships.
  
• De-escalating Situations: Empathetic responses can calm upset customers. Acknowledging their feelings and showing genuine concern can often diffuse tense situations and lead to more positive outcomes.
  
• Improving Customer Satisfaction: Customers who feel valued and understood are more likely to be satisfied with the service they receive, which can lead to positive reviews and repeat business.

Recommended Read:17 Key Customer Service Skills + Ways to Develop Them

10 ways to create more empathy in your customer service team

Creating and sustaining a culture of empathy in your customer support team should be one of your main priorities. And if you have remote customer service agents on your internet phone system, it’s even more important to ensure they embody empathy skills when you’re not around.

While some people are naturally more empathetic than others, you can teach empathy to those who may not 

shine in this area. Monthly training sessions, role-playing activities, and one-on-one coaching can help them make a real difference in your customer’s experience.

Here are ten tips to encourage your customer service team to embody empathy:

1. Learn the difference between sympathy and empathy

There’s a subtle yet important difference between “That’s frustrating” versus “I understand how frustrating this can be; let me help you.”

The former is a sympathetic approach, while the latter exemplifies empathy. 

Sympathy means understanding a person’s situation or where they’re coming from while maintaining a certain distance. You don’t have to imagine how you’d feel in someone’s position to have sympathy for them. 

Empathy comes from the German word “einfühlung,” which means “feeling into.” So, empathy means feeling what someone else is going through from their point of view. It requires an understanding of the situation, a shared emotional connection, and for CS teams, a desire to help.

When support reps empathize with customers, they’ll feel like:

• They’re being heard, understood, and valued
• Their concerns matter 
• The company is working hard to address the issues ASAP

Here are some empathy statements your support reps can use to provide excellent customer service:

• I hear you
• We can work together to solve that
• Thanks for the feedback. It will certainly help us improve
• I understand how this is causing problems for you and I will try to solve this as soon as possible
• I’m sorry you have had to deal with this

2. Encourage active listening

Active listening is the ability to focus completely on what someone is saying, understand and remember the information they’re sharing, and respond thoughtfully. You’ll often hear of active listening in sales, but it should also extend to your CS team.

Support agents must concentrate on customers’ tone of voice, body language, and facial cues. To practice active listening:

• Let customers finish talking (or venting). When callers explain their issue in its entirety, your reps will have more information and context about the situation, and find it easier to talk to them.
• Respond, restate, and summarize with the same words your customer used. Reiterating the same language used by your customer will make them feel like they’ve been heard. Validate their point of view and give encouraging feedback to prompt more information. 
• Express curiosity. Ask your customer pertinent follow-up questions about what they’ve already tried. Never assume they haven’t tried to resolve the issue before contacting you.
• Remember what’s been shared. Customers hate repeating themselves. It “proves” CS didn’t care to listen the first time around. Have your support staff take notes of what’s been said to show they’re paying attention.

Active listening will build an empathetic rapport with each caller and help speed up troubleshooting simultaneously.

3. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes (and vice versa)

A best practice for empathizing with customers is to put yourself in their shoes. Try to get your team to imagine how they would react if the same situation happened to them. 

As your team takes a step back to gain this perspective, they should ask themselves how they would want the issue resolved. This may inspire an out-of-the-box solution that works for your customer and your company.

Similarly, if your customer service rep is dealing with a difficult and angry customer, they may ask the customer what they believe would be an appropriate resolution. This will put your customer in your support staffs’ shoes. When your customer practices empathy, they may see that your agent is trying to work with them, not against them.

Seeing issues from the customer’s perspective will help your team better understand who they really are, and how they can best resolve their problem.

4. Get to know and understand your customers

Your customer service team should be armed with deep customer knowledge. With this foundational intel, it’s easier to understand customer needs and get to the finer points of their concerns.

So, who are your customers and what do they care about most? To figure this out, it helps to know:

• Your customer’s industry, organization structure, typical roles
• How they use your product/service
• What they like most about your offerings
• Their common pain points

When it comes to call centers, you should also get your agents in the habit of learning each caller’s name.

A great customer service tip is to use your caller’s name throughout the conversation. It’s one of the best ways to capture their attention and establish rapport at the beginning of the phone call.

5. Prioritize accuracy over speed

Some customer support managers get so caught up in their team’s ability to provide quick resolutions that it leads to experiences where customers feel as if they’re being rushed or not fully understood. 

These two types of questions help your team do both:

• Leading questions, which helps gather more intel. “After you did X, what happened?” 
• Reflective questions, which show they understood what was shared. “It sounds like the screen went blank after the hard restart, but the indicator lights were still blinking green?”

Now, speed is still important to both your numbers and your customer’s time. So make sure that your support staff sprinkles in words of urgency, such as:

• “This problem will be dealt with immediately.”
• “As we’re talking, I’m currently doing X to troubleshoot the issue.”
• “I’ll have our team look at this and determine a resolution by the end of the day.”

These two habits will help your team prioritize accuracy and attention to detail without wasting time. Achieving high accuracy is a great way to improve your customer experience metrics like NPS or CSAT – if your CS team is held to them.

6. Address and remove biases

A bias is an automatic judgment based on a customer’s age, gender, language, accent, occupation, etc. Your support staff may not notice they treat customers who fall into different categories unequally, but it’s your job as a manager to open your team’s eyes to this problematic potential.

Let’s say one of your agents has an older caller on the line. They may assume this caller won’t be tech-savvy and may talk down to them or get frustrated when they don’t immediately understand how to resolve a technical difficulty. This would be referred to as ageism, and 65% of adults aged 50-80 say they receive these sorts of messages daily.

Biases like these can directly or indirectly affect the quality of service your CS team provides. They can create walls between your agents and your customers. And this affects the overall customer experience.

As you cultivate an empathetic team, teach your agents to never assume anything about a customer based on a preconceived notion of who they may be. 

7. Gather customer feedback

Want deeper insight into the quality of your customer service? Gather feedback directly from your customers via web or live chat, email surveys, and social media.

You can also have your agents ask customers questions at the end of their interactions, such as:

• “How would you rate my helpfulness?”
• “What could I have done to make our conversation better?”
• “Are you happy with the resolution I provided? Why or why not?”

If you spot patterns about customers feeling unheard, disrespected, or not helped to the best of an agent’s ability, you’ll know what you need to work on.

In one of the best customer service examples, a passenger of Virgin Airlines wrote a letter to Richard Branson describing their in-flight meal as a “miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter.”

Branson invited the passenger to help Virgin overhaul its menu. He also later asked the passenger to be on the board of the airline’s culinary council. He famously said:

“A complaint is a chance to turn a customer into a lifelong friend… If we address a complaint well and even involve the customer in the solution, it brings customers closer to our brand.”

Your customers will respect your company much more when you hear their feedback and opinions, value what’s being shared, and resolve to make it right.

8. Highlight positive customer service interactions

Customer service managers should reinforce positive, empathetic interactions your team has with customers as often as possible. 

Being empathetic to the first caller or someone in a good mood is a lot easier than being empathetic to the last caller or one who’s hostile. That’s why it pays to acknowledge your team members for doing a stellar job and keep them motivated. 

Give them a shout-out at the end of the day. Highlight exemplary instances of customer service during your monthly meetings. Or send an email or Slack message to the team so everyone can dole out kudos.

Do what you can to uplift your team, and you’ll build positive momentum that extends to your customers.

9. Encourage cross-department collaboration

Create opportunities for your customer support team to work with other departments, such as product development or marketing. This collaboration helps them understand the broader context of the company’s offerings and challenges, making it easier for them to empathize with customer issues and feedback. 

For instance, when they collaborate with marketing, they’ll get a better understanding of what is being promised to customers and what customer expectations will be like. This way if a customer comes in saying they’re dissatisfied with your offerings, you’ll be able to understand and empathize with them better and suggest an appropriate solution. 

One way I can think of, off the top of my head, to facilitate this collaboration would be – scheduling regular meetings between customer service and other departments to discuss common customer pain points, feedback, and potential solutions. 

10. Conduct regular training and dialogue

Ensure that empathy remains a focal point by providing regular training and fostering ongoing conversations about customer service experiences and best practices. Here are some steps you can take – 

• Ongoing Training Programs: Implement regular training sessions that focus on developing empathy and customer service skills. These can include workshops, webinars, and guest speakers who specialize in empathy and customer relations.
• Role-Playing Exercises: Incorporate role-playing exercises into training to help team members practice empathetic responses in various customer scenarios. This hands-on approach helps reinforce learning and build confidence in handling real-life situations.
• Customer Feedback Review: Regularly review customer feedback as a team. Analyze both positive and negative feedback to identify areas where empathy made a difference or where it could be improved. Use this feedback to guide training and development efforts.
• Empathy Champions: Designate “empathy champions” within the team who can lead by example and mentor others. These individuals can share their expertise, offer support, and help keep the conversation about empathy ongoing.
• Interactive Workshops: Host interactive workshops that focus on specific aspects of empathy, such as active listening, emotional intelligence, and managing difficult conversations. These workshops can be tailored to address common challenges and reinforce key skills.

By committing to regular training and continuous dialogue, you ensure that empathy remains a core component of your customer service culture. This ongoing focus helps team members develop and refine their skills, leading to more consistent and genuine empathetic interactions with customers.

Final thoughts

We should all do a bit more to show empathy towards each other in this post-COVID-19 world. And your customer support team, in particular, has a great opportunity to take a considerate approach to hearing, understanding, and helping those in need or stress.

By encouraging active listening, putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, and addressing unintentional biases, your team will be well on their way to excelling in this area.

Remember, empathy separates good customer experiences from the best ones. So when you follow these eight tips to cultivate a culture of empathy, your team will build stronger relationships with your customers and boost overall satisfaction. This will then drive repeat sales, rave reviews, and long-term loyalty.