Empathy plays a vital role in shaping your customer experience. When companies prioritize empathetic customer service, even simple interactions can leave a lasting impact and create memorable moments. Learn how to empower your call center agents through empathy training.

Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings, emotions, and perspectives of others, specifically, your customers. It’s an essential component of emotional intelligence and a vital agent skill that allows your call center employees to connect with customers on a deeper, more compassionate level. Empathetic contact center agents know how to communicate productively, assist customers in a way that creates an exceptional customer experience, and foster and maintain meaningful relationships between your customers and your brand.

Unfortunately, empathy, particularly empathy between individuals that have never met, isn’t an innate practice. So, how do you ensure your agents are exhibiting empathy during their customer interactions? By empowering them with contact center empathy training.

This distinction is highly important. Empathy and sympathy, although distinct concepts, are often used interchangeably in everyday language and while empathy often must be learned, sympathy is an instinct. The crucial difference between the two lies in the fact that sympathy involves sharing the feelings of another person, while empathy entails understanding those feelings without necessarily adopting them as your own.

** Below is an example of how sympathy is often used in customer interaction and how empathy can be used instead to create a more productive experience that drives customer satisfaction. **

Empathy is the cornerstone of consistently delivering an exceptional customer experience. It’s essential for your call center representatives to empathize and connect with the customer’s situation throughout the entire customer journey. A genuine display of empathy can be the difference between fostering a strong, lasting connection and losing the customer’s trust and business.

By prioritizing empathy as part of your call center training program, you’ll experience remarkable benefits.

In today’s highly digital landscape, customers often feel like mere numbers in a call queue, lacking the personal touch of face-to-face interactions. However, displaying empathy towards customers can be a powerful way to reintroduce the human element into contact center interactions. When customers realize they are conversing with a living, understanding human who empathizes with their perspective, their satisfaction with the interaction significantly increases.

Validating your customers’ feelings helps to establish a common ground for cooperation and reduces conflicts. Empathy enables agents to establish genuine connections with customers, ensuring that their needs and concerns are not only acknowledged but also validated, which encourages customer cooperation. When contact center agents display a high level of understanding and sensitivity towards customers’ needs and feelings, it leads to a significantly improved and positive customer experience.

Empathy can prevent minor issues from escalating into major complaints or negative reviews. Contact center agents who can effectively address customers’ concerns with empathy can avoid potential escalations and maintain customer satisfaction.

By humanizing your agents and creating a foundation for a trusting relationship with your customers, you create opportunity for upselling and cross-selling. It boils down to the basic fact that when customers interact with an unempathetic agent, they perceive that individual as only caring about extracting more revenue, not as a way to further support the customer. Conversely, sales opportunities presented by an empathetic agent foster feelings of genuine care for the customer’s needs and experience, leading to more successful sales.

Creating that genuine sense of human connection also benefits the agents themselves. When they witness the positive impact they can have on the customer experience, it brings a sense of fulfillment to their work and contributes to employee satisfaction. This rewarding feeling contributes to better agent retention, as they find satisfaction in knowing they genuinely make a difference in customers’ lives.

Moreover, because displays of empathy create positive customer interactions, agents are likely to have fewer stressful or volatile conversations that often occur when the customer doesn’t feel understood or cared for. By decreasing the number of negative interactions for the agent, they are less likely to be unhappy in their role and to seek alternative employment.

Empathetic agents that have been trained to genuinely listen to your customers’ needs are better prepared to find an effective resolution. Demonstrating empathy allows agents to establish customer trust and discover the best course of action to address the individual customer’s distinct issue, ensuring the customer’s expectations are met and they are entirely satisfied with their support experience.

Microsoft’s State of Global Customer Service Report found that 95% of customers cited their customer experience as a key influencer of their brand loyalty. Customers satisfied by helpful and fulfilling customer service interactions are more likely to become repeat customers and brand advocates that actively refer new customers to your organization. By embracing empathy, brands can cultivate a more meaningful and profound experience for their customers, thereby driving business growth, improved brand reputation, and enhancing visibility. Empathetic interactions contribute to a positive perception of the brand as a customer-centric business that genuinely cares about its customers’ well-being.

Fostering empathy in the call center involves breaking down barriers between the company and its customers while ensuring all interactions carry an authentic touch, fostering trust and connection. This trust needs to extend across various aspects of customer interaction, such as knowledge sharing, providing answers, and ensuring customer satisfaction.

Here are 5 skills that should be featured in your curriculum to ensure quality empathy training:

Active listening requires undivided focus on what the customer is saying, the language they are using, their tone, etc. and responding with positive behaviors that exhibit empathy. Active listening helps build rapport and enables agents to identify appropriate solutions. Though the method of communication will dictate which active listening behaviors can be implemented, there are several critical practices to consider.

• Ask questions to get to the root of the issue
• Use affirmative statements, such as “I understand” or “I see”
• Repeat and/or paraphrase important details
• Avoid defensive responses
• Give the customer your full attention
• Do not interrupt the customer
• Take notes – documentation in your CRM will help provide the customer with better service down the line

Agents should utilize insights gained from active listening to personalize every interaction you’re your customers. By customizing the experience, customers will appreciate the attention and develop a stronger connection with your brand. Utilize available customer data to understand their behaviors, preferences, and interests, then tailor your communications accordingly.

You can personalize your messaging by:

• Addressing customers by their name, particularly their first name, when appropriate
• Begin interactions by asking how the customer is doing to set the stage for a friendly conversation before addressing their issues
• Use data and notes from their account profile to demonstrate knowledge about their history and previous needs
• Whenever possible, offer unique solutions to meet their distinct needs

Curiosity and genuine interest are at the heart of empathy. Train your agents to ask pertinent questions to gain a comprehensive understanding of the situation. Encourage agents to use follow-up questions like, “Can you tell me more about…?” while giving them time to reflect and respond comfortably.

Maintain a positive attitude and set aside personal biases when attempting to comprehend someone else’s viewpoint. Avoid taking negative interactions personally and focus on seeing the situation from their perspective to truly grasp their feelings and needs.

Over time, agents may unintentionally develop habits that hinder their ability to express empathy, such as the use of trigger words or phrases that customers find frustrating or dismissive. Here are some examples of triggers that communicate a lack of empathy and alternative words and phrases that demonstrate genuine understanding and concern.

Work with Insite to develop a fully customized training curriculum and empower your team with knowledge to foster meaningful customer relationships and provide an outstanding customer experience with every interaction. Are you searching for additional training course resources? Browse our comprehensive catalog of contact center training programs.