To-Do-List To Increase Empathy in Customer Service Team

Doing anything right is not enough for being customer support. You need to understand and increase your empathy to customers. It’s because they want to be understood for what they actually need. 

To build a long-term customer relationship, you need to have a team with strong empathic ability.  However, it’s not easy to teach your team about this skill because it relates to emotion. Moreover, you need to know why this skill is critical for your business.

Direct Impact on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

The success of customer satisfaction and loyalty are affected by the empathy of the employees. Certainly, it also affects the number of leads you get per month. 

There are some statistics:

• When feeling loyal, 66% of US consumers spend more.
• When feeling loyal, 55% recommend brands.

Those numbers did not come because they feel empathy for your company. The customer will be loyal if they get a good experience from an employee from the front line. If one of your employees makes them having a bad experience, they will definitely move to your competitor. It will be even worse if they post about that bad experience on social media. 

To make a decision for purchasing something, 90% of people tend to consider the online review. Although you cannot control all of the buyers to give you good reviews. Besides, people will consider looking at the way you respond to bad reviews. 

If you can show your empathy in responding to bad feedbacks, it can increase customer loyalty and give them a good experience. 

Besides, you need to take a look at this to-do-list to increase the empathy of your team.

Listen to your customers actively

To increase empathy in your customer service team, they have to practice to pay attention a lot to their customer. The skill needed is listening actively. 

Every customer wants to be listened to and that is one of the ways you will understand what they need. By that way, they will feel that you truly care about them.

You can start the practising by pairing them. One of them can be a customer who complains or submit a special request and one another can be the employee who listens to them. 

You can help them as well with the following steps:

• Write down what they said with your words.
• Give them feedback.
• Offer them more information.
• Confirm their point of view  

Focus on the possible request

In showing empathy, you need to understand your customer point of you. Some customers sometimes ask impossible requests and even sound ridiculous. However, it is your job to listen to them about anything although you cannot fulfil all of or their request. Considering that, you definitely want to make them stay. 

You and your team can practice by pairing them as a customer service and customer. The scenario is the customer should ask a ridiculous request. Moreover, customer service should know how to defend that.

Learn the language of empathetic

Language is the main key to communication. To show your empathy, you need to be aware of the word you are going to use. You and your team can practice using the following languages.

Empathetic questions

Showing that you care to customers by asking them a question of what they need is a good way to start. Then, you need to listen to them carefully.

Leading questions

This kind of question will help you to find out what will happen next. 

Reflective questions

You can use reflective questions to get to know about your customers’ knowledge, ideas and experiences.  

Words of urgency

When customers come to you with a complain, the use of urgency word can make them feel that they are important. It can calm them down as well as you take their issue sort of priority. 

Committed close

In the end, you need to show your commitment. It is needed to make the final impression. You may say “I will reach you as soon as possible”. It is also used for giving them a good experience and feelings. 

Practice with empathy bingo

Ask your team to play empathy bingo. It can help your team to be aware of the language they are going to use. Then, they can use the awareness to put those phrase into the conversation with customers. 

You can use the bingo card or ask your employees to make it themselves. Give card for every oof them and ask them to play bingo with the statement on it. 

Every time they hear or use one of the statement, they have to cross it. The winner will be the first person who gets a straight line. 

The phrase you have to use to your customers should be authentic because it is only not about winning a game. 

Find out others experience

Customer service team will never get enough experience if they just listen to their customers. They need to widen their knowledge by eavesdropping to strangers. 

After that, ask them to collect together what they have been experiencing. Put the result together including the emotions involved, the perspectives, and the way they talk.

Don’t use jargon frequently

Sometimes, we do not realize that we often use jargon in the office or even when we talk to the customers. 

As a customer service, you need to be aware that some of your customers do not have any idea about your jargon. Overusing that even can irritate them if they do not find it interested. So, you and your team should less the use of your jargon.  

See a different perspective

Do you remember “the dress” which went viral back then? Look at the following picture.

Some people saw it as a blue and black colour but the rest said it was a gold and white colour. 

They debated the colour to get the right one and of course, it would not.

However, showing this to your team will make them learn about how to open up into a different perspective. 

Identify different situation

The key to being the empathetic one is trying to understand other’s situation with their own perspective. 

By asking them to understand other’s situation, they can learn to identify the differences between apathy, sympathy, and empathy. 

Moreover, they will know later when the empathetic they have to show in certain situation. 

Imagine rewinding the time

When a customer asks a return because they want to change the product or they did not satisfy with your product, you can ask your team to imagine how if they rewind the time.

Imagine how long the time will be needed by your customer to wait for your response. How if you stand on their side and feel what your customers have been through. Think about the time lost and what they will get if they did not wait for you too long. 

By thinking about this, it will increase the empathetic of your team.

Sharing session

Having a sharing session is important for your customer service team. In this session, they need to share anything they have been through in facing a different kind of customers.

Your team can exchange ideas and experience so they can learn more to understand your customers. It also can increase their empathy by understanding other perspectives from their teammate.