In this presentation, I have explained why empathising is necessary for improved customer service. Not only that, the presentation also highlights various ways by which we can induct it into our customer service reps.

1. Empathizing for
Greater Customer
Satisfaction

3. We have heard long enough that putting yourselves in others’ shoes is must for 100% resolution of
customer issues but believe me when a representative attends a hundred customers every day with
their own personal set of problems hounding them, most of them falter in empathizing with the
customer.
Rather than solving customers’ problem, the philosophy should be to empathize with a co-partner.
That way the rep would walk the extra path to help.

4. It also depends on how the manager treats his employees. The most important quality that should be looked in
a customer service manager should be empathy, more than the cases he has successfully closed or how satisfied
are his clients.
Well, satisfied clients and customers are indicators of empathy but not just empathy alone.
They are indicators of integrity and many other virtues in the professional.
For a successful customer service empathy is the most important element.
So, the development of that in your employees is a must. And it must be stripped of all the virtues and
developed independently.

5. Empathy in customer service representatives involves many elements

6. You always try to find out more about people who feel are important to you.
So, if your representative is showing more interest in researching about the customers, their order history,
their feedback, their interaction calls, their likes and dislikes without you asking him to, you can rest
assured that he is slowly moving through the first stage of empathy cycle.

7. If the customer service representative is allowing the customer to vent out freely without negatively
reacting,
OR
Is showing interest in conversing about things least concerned to the company but of customers’
interest, you can rest assured that he has learnt to be receptive of the customers’ expression of the
problem.

8. If the representative is taking enough time to research out the situation, the order history, previous
records of customers’ interaction with the organisation, so that the customer goes through minimum
escalations and can get their problem solved, without anyone asking him to,
He has started taking responsibility for resolving the customer issues, which may be not even within
his KRA.

9. Often times, you would find a customer service representative up-on their heels and often quarrelling
with other departments to get customers’ problems resolved in time.
The same guy is extra smooth or polite with the customers. He is your guy who is empathizing with
your customers.

10. Now, you may have a customer service representative who is empathetic but not sounding empathetic
to your users.
That guy needs to be trained on communicating empathy as it is the most important element.

11. (a) Now, you may have a customer service representative who is empathetic but not sounding
empathetic to your users.
(b)That guy needs to be trained on communicating empathy as it is the most important element.
( c) While screening employees to be included in customer service, the empathy grid can be of quite
help.We need to devise questions based on each element of this grid.

12. The below grid can be quite helpful in understanding the Empathetic Quotient of your employees
while screening for Customer Service

14. 1.Emotional Empathy– When the persons feel the same level of distress, joy or pain as others.
(a)To assess whether your representative has emotional empathy, allot him tasks for the whole day,
where customers have gone in through distress. let him face dissatisfied clients and customers.
(b) At the end of the day, observe his behavior whether he is sad, happy, enthusiastic for taking up
any extra-curricular activities set by the organization, or whether he is showing the same level of
productivity after handing the clients in distress or not.

15. 2. Cognitive Empathy– When the representative understands the levels of distress, joy or pain but
doesn’t feel the same.
(a) To check Cognitive empathy, allot a few customers whose problems need to be urgently solved
and one set whose problems can be resolved later.
(b) The gravity of the problems with both the set should be the same. But the distress levels of the
customers or behavioral response must be different in both the sets. Let the employees go through
customer interactions randomly.
(c) Ask your employee to list down customers with more pressing problems in an ascending or
descending order.

16. 3. Communicating Empathy– When the representative uses statements or behavioral expressions
that can truly satiate the customer in that situation.
(a) Check among your employees who are using more of these statements or their variants during
conversations with customers.

17. •It sounds like you did everything you could.
•I can see how difficult this has been.
•The whole thing sounds so discouraging.
•I can totally see why you would be upset.
•This is so hard.
•I can’t believe how well you’re holding up, considering how much stress you’re under.

18. •It sounds like you did everything you could.
•I can see how difficult this has been.
•The whole thing sounds so discouraging.
•I can totally see why you would be upset.
•This is so hard.
•I can’t believe how well you’re holding up, considering how much stress you’re under.

19. 4. Empathetic Experiences– When the representative shows a high level of empathy for all his co-mates and
users, even during non-office hours or in general working.
(a) Ask your representative to list down all major activities of empathy, they have shown somewhere in their life.
(b) Ask them to write down about their family, about situations which make them angry or disregard others’
feelings, about people they love and hate and so on.

20.  Empathetic experiences of a person greatly decide how much empathetic they would be.
 Generally, employees who have an aggressive and non-empathetic personal front or the ones who grew up in
a non-empathetic environment will be less empathetic.
 If the four quadrants are equally assessed, then you know where your employees are standing on the
empathetic scale and can train them accordingly.

21. THANKYOU