As a customer yourself, have you experienced customer service professionals speak as if they are following a sales agenda or script? Or without understanding your point of view, feelings, or true needs? Or repeat standard operating procedures repeatedly without being able to help you? Or make life even more difficult than it already is for you?
It might seem common sensical for empathy to be part of customer service but as you may have experienced, it may not be common practice. And because of all that has emerged since Covid, empathy is even more critical for businesses to embrace, not only to survive but to thrive by being a positive force for good in a shaken, vulnerable world.
What is empathy?
Empathy expert, Dr Helen Riess explains that empathy has three aspects - cognitive empathy where we take the perspective of the other; emotional empathy where we feel what the other feels, and compassionate empathy where we are moved to care and take action about the other’s welfare.
How important is empathy in customer service?
Within research findings over the last few years, the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore by the Institute of Service Excellence has highlighted the increasing importance of empathy as a key driver for customer satisfaction and loyalty.
In the 2017 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, empathy was also found to be one of the top three attributes of a successful customer service professional. It also found that
- Seventy-two per cent of Singapore customers are willing to spend about 16 per cent more due to excellent customer service.
- Sixty-five per cent have spent more with a company because of a history of positive service.
- Sixty-six per cent of Singaporean customers have not completed a purchase because of poor service.
- On average, a Singaporean customer tells 24 people about their poor service experience!
Who advocates for empathy and compassion at work?
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is known to have used empathy and collaboration to engineer a USD$250 billion turnaround there. He has said to CBS Sunday Morning, “When I think about empathy or compassion, I think it is a business essential. We are in the business of meeting unmet, unarticulated needs of customers and no way will you be able to get that consistently right if you don’t have that deep sense of empathy… being able to see what others are seeing.”
Former CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner, attributed his success to his compassionate leadership and in his 2018 speech at the Wharton graduation ceremony said, “…managing compassionately is not just a better way to build a team, it’s a better way to build a company.”
In their book, “Awakening Compassion at Work”, Dr Monica Worline from Stanford University’s Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education and Professor Jane Dutton, co-founder of the Centre for Positive Organization at the University of Michigan, cite Gallup’s research which shows that genuine expression of compassion, as part of high-quality service, creates brand loyalty. They also mention research that when employees give feelings and actions as gifts to customers, the customer is more loyal, and the employees feel better about work. This is in distinct contrast to emotional labour, where customer service staff are expressing emotions or smiling when they do not genuinely feel it.
Why does this matter even more in the world we live in?
In a fast-paced, tech-driven, social-media saturated, volatile, uncertain world with many social and environmental challenges, there has been increasing human disconnection, loneliness, stress, depression, and other mental health issues. Covid-19 just escalated all this to a new level by straining our mental health, relationships, and even avenues for stress relief like travel.
People are more vulnerable, needing warm human connection and support. Of course, customers may not articulate this upfront. Their burdens are invisible, and it takes sensitive businesses to know what people need.
When a customer service professional is empathetic, they firstly do their best not to add to the burdens of people. Secondly, they offer respite and a temporary oasis from the onslaught of stresses the customer faces. Thirdly, they may offer a positive experience that turns around the customer’s day, week or even life. For that moment, the customer, when feeling supported, can breathe a little easier, feel more energised and strengthened to carry their load better. They can have hope and faith restored in the goodness of people – something they may need to keep going. Perhaps that is why we have heard customers sometimes use the word “angels” when describing customer service staff who have understood their perspective and feelings and taken action to make life easier for them. And finally, customers may learn from the empathetic behaviour of the customer service professionals and pay it forward, thereby creating a ripple effect in our society.
Who are the angels amidst us?
Advocacy angels can take different forms:
- The Healer knows how difficult it can be to be human and makes life easier and less painful for customers. This is valuable in a world where people bear invisible burdens and wounds.
- The Sunshine-Maker brings joy to a world ridden with fear, anxiety, and conflict. Through their genuine smiles, humour and appreciative, encouraging conversations, they bring on smiles and laughter.
- The Warrior cuts through red tape and proactively advocates for customers’ wellbeing by identifying ways to improve company policies and practices.
- The Fellow Human Being creates warm human connection in a world where this is increasingly absent. By sharing and listening to stories and wisdom gained from our collective human journey, they add meaning and illumination to customers’ lives.
In our “Building an Empathic Organisational Culture” programme, we also suggest how businesses can scale up empathy with the help of such angels.
What can stand in the way?
A lot! There are many barriers to customer service professionals showing empathy.
“Only those who have been given sufficient amount of empathy develop empathy” - Charles Poladian, Medical Daily
“Empathy and compassion for others tend to be highest when the body is in a physiological state of balance....” – Dr Helen Riess, Empathy Expert
Customer service professionals need to be working in an empathetic environment with empathetic leaders who meet their needs and take care of their wellbeing. They also need to show empathy to themselves.
Wages, working hours, workload, organisational culture, breaks, who gets hired, who gets promoted, how leaders treat staff, how staff view their work and themselves, how disrespectful customer behaviours get understood and processed — all this will affect customer service and needs to be addressed for meaningful, sustainable results. And short training programmes are just a start to this journey.
How can our programme help?
An inside-out approach that deals with empathy in a congruent way is needed and that is what our programme, “Building an Empathic Organisational Culture” focuses on. It is precisely this approach that past participants have appreciated. They have said our programme has a “holistic approach to empathy” and that they have found it “eye-opening, especially on self-empathy”. In two days, we bring you on a journey to see with new eyes and experiment with new ways of being and doing.
Our world is facing crises of epic proportions. Along with change-makers from other sectors, we believe that businesses that are part of the solution and not the problem will also be the heroes of our time.
Vadivu Govind is the Director of Human Unlimited (humanunlimited.sg) and facilitates our “Building an Empathic Organisational Culture” programme. She holds a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University, New York City. She was also co-author (with Hilary Lee) of the winning paper (Asia Pacific) for the 2019 Val Hammond Research Competition on the Human Aspects of the Future of Work. Their paper was entitled “Empathy: Game-Changing the Asian Workplace”. She was awarded the Innovation Fellowship by the Royal Commonwealth Society of Singapore.