This document discusses metrics and solutions to improve customer experience through empathy. It provides an overview of Harding & Yorke's services, which include measuring customer empathy through audits, benchmarks, and mystery shopping. Their solutions involve consulting, training, and coaching clients to develop empathy within their organizations in order to improve customer loyalty and profitability. Research has shown companies with higher empathy scores are more profitable.

1. Empathy Metrics & Solutions to improve Customer Experience
This document gives background information about Harding & Yorke and Empathy drives Customer Advocacy
some typical client engagements. The activities are split into ‘Metrics’, A differentiated customer experience can be created by consistently understanding
‘Solutions’ & ‘’Enterprise Partnerships’. If you would like to explore how we your customer’s rational and emotional needs and responding appropriately. This
can best help your business reach the next level in customer experience is called Empathy and is a trait that can be harnessed and developed by
please contact any member of the Harding & Yorke team. organisations to drive customer loyalty. If you deliver your process, product or
service with Empathy and exceed your customers’ expectations, you will create
Traditional satisfaction measures fall short on
brand advocates – raving fans – of your customers.
delivering profit
Organisations have invested a great deal of money Companies with higher Empathy Quotients are more profitable
in service and process measures to increase
In 2008, after 4 years of analysing millions of data points collected from 200 UK
satisfaction and customer retention. Various
companies through Harding & Yorke’s Empathy Rating Index Company (ERIC),
initiatives over the years include TQM, CRM, Lean,
the Empathy Quotient was academically proven to correlate strongly with profit.
Six Sigma, ACSI and NPS and whilst some correlate (Analysis by Jamie Lywood, Prof. Merlin Stone and Dr. Yuksel Ekinci, Oxford Brookes University.
with ‘Stakeholder Value’ and ‘Revenue Growth’, Published in Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management (2009) 16, 207 –
there has been little impact on the bottom line. A lot 214.doi: 10.1057/dbm.2009.24).
of time and money has been invested to build a
Jamie Lywood, CEO better relationship with customers to influence Empathy Services include measurement, benchmarking, consulting, training
Harding & Yorke loyalty, but with questionable real success. and coaching
“Customers The first step to developing Empathy with your customers is to improve the
Intuitively we can all agree that a better Customer Empathy of your people, and particularly those in direct contact with customers.
won’t always Experience ought to yield more profit Harding & Yorke’s Empathy Academy solutions team builds on the company’s
remember what Harding & Yorke was founded in the early 1990s to extensive customer experience measures to help organisations optimise
you say... but develop a new approach to customer experience relationships with customers. The Empathy Academy works in partnership with
they’ll remember measurement. The founders of the company clients to build strategies, design interventions, transfer skills and create coaching
how you make recognised that it is not only how satisfied you are environments where Empathy is embedded and thrives in the culture of the
with a process, product or service, but also - and organisation. An organisation’s Empathy Quotient is audited at intervals to ensure
them feel.”
more importantly - how the company makes you feel, consistency and improvement of service delivery.
which influences your loyalty as a customer. Our
definition of ‘Customer’ is: Anyone you need to treat Harding & Yorke works with leading companies around the world
well in order to thrive The company serves clients in the UK, Europe, USA, Australasia and South Africa.
Following considerable local interest in its Empathy Services, the company opened
a Johannesburg office in January 2010.
Locations Head Office w/ www.empathy.co.uk Contact/ Stuart Lamb, Enterprise Consultant
Oxford The Old Stables t/ + 44 (0) 1235 845 700 + 44 (0) 7887 782 875
London Manor Farm
Johannesburg Appleford-on-Thames
Oxfordshire, OX14 4PA

2. Harding & Yorke – Metrics: “What gets measured gets done.”
Component Descriptor How Harding & Yorke can help Expression of
Interest (y/n)
Customer Empathy An analysis and cultural insight into how you We carry out unobtrusive analysis on areas of your business (internally or
Audit™ make your customers feel through various externally) and report back to you experientially through the use of soundbites,
channels including: telephony; face-2-face; scans and video clips to demonstrate. This engages your people and motivates
correspondence; one2one meetings; email; them to take personal responsibility as well as highlighting those aspects of the
and digital media. way you make your customers feel that are cultural. We identify key trends and
better practice.
Monitoring - ERIC™ A low-cost proven metric that allows you to A menu style costing allows you to pick and choose what you want measured and
periodically monitor progress against key benchmarked and how you want it presented. The empathy measures are
competitors, internal markets and original academically proven to correlate strongly with profit and have been tested at
data. 98.8% reliable. Stock data is held on over 200 companies which have been
measured semi-annually since 2004.
Aspire60™ The definitive Customer Experience Index An opportunity to see how you fare against the 60 most aspirational companies
made up of the 60 most aspirational serving the UK. Question-by-question analysis available online and
companies serving the UK – contact centre downloadable .csv files allow you interrogate the core data against other known
based. metrics. Companies included in Aspire60™ are entitled to a discounted package
of measurement and reporting. Companies not included can challenge the
Aspire60™ companies in a bid to displace them. PR and industry media support
provided for inclusive companies.
Advanced Mystery We have a national network of employed You can either commission retail only visits or bring the whole organisation into
Shopping researchers who specialise in identifying line by carrying our comparable measures across the business. This research is
how customers are made to feel in retail comparable to all other channel measures (telephony, digital and
environments. We make unscripted visits to correspondence) and can be reported on simultaneously. We employ all our own
stores to view and buy products and services researchers who carry out each interaction unscripted but well briefed. They are
and capture these on covert video. The capable of exploring complex scenarios and reporting consistently. We use
analysis is not about ‘being acknowledged’ covert video where appropriate and are the only company we know of that has
but more about how we felt by the way we been accepted by the Unions for mystery shopping in financial institutions.
were acknowledged.

3. Harding & Yorke – Metrics: “What gets measured gets done.”
Component Descriptor How Harding & Yorke can help Expression of
Interest (y/n)
Outcome based The original Customer Empathy Audit has In collections we identify which behaviours are best to capture a fulfilled promise
measures (Collections been extended to report on outcomes. Here as opposed to unfulfilled promise or no promise. These behaviours are not
/ Complaints etc.) we can identify the behaviours you need to entirely obvious from the outset and building teams for best outcome have
develop within your people to get the best remarkable results. In complaints and other areas we can assess how customers
outcome. are made to feel after their interaction and the behaviours that elicit the best
outcome etc.
Supporting other Many Customer Experience Programmes are Our methodology is an excellent way of helping you bring to life other initiatives
metrics and Customer focussed purely on the customer whereas that you may have started or to which you are committed to. Our way of
Experience our approach adds a new dimension by presenting and reporting makes it very engaging and experiential and helps you
Programmes (e.g. assessing the attitudes and behaviours of to understand why customers feel the way they do. Our reporting has been
NPS, ACSI etc.) and your people and how they make your described as exemplary when supporting Treating Customers Fairly (TCF)
TCF customers feel. requirements.
Interviews Our researchers are accredited to perform This is an exquisite way of validating customers’ thoughts and feelings and
simple and complex interviews in telephone through the use of H&Y’s researchers you can be guaranteed of value and
and in face2face environments. They use accuracy. Not only do we bring new insights and thoughts to you from your
proven techniques such as ‘spontaneous customers, we also play a very valuable PR role by engaging with your customers
open questioning’ to get huge value from in a grown up and yet very conversational way. We use interviewing for B2C, B2B
each interview. Comparable measures to and internal environments. Where previously agreed we can capture the
the rest of the business can be built in to the interviews through the use of covert or overt recording equipment and assess
interviews or carried out retrospectively key trends. These can be assessed against and reported with other metrics
through the analysis of their answers. creating a 360⁰ process.
Online Questionnaires We can provide the highest quality Where your customer base is too big or your internal customers global capturing
integrated online and digital questionnaires their views, thoughts and feeling through digital media is a real option. H&Y have
for use throughout stakeholder groups. Our teamed up with technology companies to be able to provide this level of service
technology and questionnaire design ensure at the highest level. The secret is in the deployment of technology and the clever
your target audiences are not fatigued design and deliberation of the question set. We minimise well known problems
through over sampling and irrelevance. such as participant fatigue and response unreliability.
Unknown Risk Devised through the online capture of Through the sensitive deployment of our unknown risk proposition you can view
empathy we have developed a set of (through specialist fractal mapping visualisation techniques) where risk is likely to
questions that give powerful insight into be highest and send in a quick reaction team for further assessment. In this way
areas of unknown risk. The categories of you can prevent at best, and minimise at worst, the effects when things go wrong
unknown risk we can report on are: Financial saving you money, reputation and ensure that you stay in tune with all the
Performance; Reputation and Regulation. regulations you are required to comply with.

4. Harding & Yorke – Solutions: Empathy Academy’s Key Components of Excellence
Component Descriptor How Harding & Yorke can help Expression of
Interest (y/n)
Identifying strengths Finding out why people behave the way they On-site discovery; shadowing people at work; holding discussion groups with
and deciding what do; identifying positive and negative aspects staff and line management; interviews with senior managers, HR, trainers etc.;
needs to change of culture, structure and processes understand effect of measures, rules and processes; present report and
recommendations
Customer Experience Reviewing or developing customer Consultative input from empathy perspective – how to positively affect colleague
Strategy Design experience strategy; High- level strategic and customer experience through intelligent design; facilitation of design
goal-setting, organisational and process process
design for all elements of customer
experience
Brand and Brand Design of clear Brand message; internal and Facilitation of decisions on brand identity and organisational personality; Cross-
Promise design external branding; Bold statements functional event facilitation to distil Brand Promises and prepare for
describing the kind of experience we want to communication across the business
give our customers
Recruitment/selection Recruitment process that targets and Work collaboratively with HR team to review and enhance existing recruitment
process identifies desirable attitudes and behaviours process; design and conduct recruitment campaign including design and running
of bespoke Assessment Centres; train assessors
Skills Development Training and teambuilding programmes for Review existing materials; observe/provide feedback on current training content
employees at all levels, in both front-line and and style; design/co-design new materials; run ‘train the trainer’ events;
support functions. Materials and trainers deliver/co-deliver training; accredit trainers and hand over materials
that motivate and inspire people and
encourage positive attitudes and behaviours,
as well as high level of technical skills and
knowledge, and focus on excellence rather
than ‘OK’ performance
Performance Design and/or review and revise Review effectiveness of existing framework and measures; facilitate workshop
management – Performance Management framework to with key stakeholders to draw up/revise comprehensive performance standards,
process design and support strategic aims; includes both with objective measurement/scoring framework if required to balance needs of
implementation internal team/employee performance and business and customer and to drive the right behaviours. Can include complete
outsource partner performance and SLAs ‘Balanced scorecard’ performance measures, Call Quality Monitoring forms,
quality standards for letters and e-mails and standards of excellence for support
functions

5. Harding & Yorke – Solutions: Empathy Academy’s Key Components of Excellence
Component Descriptor How Harding & Yorke can help Expression of
Interest (y/n)
Create positive Managers, team leaders and/or dedicated Observe/review current coaching practice; review current coaching skills
coaching culture coaches with the skills and attitudes to drive training/materials; design/deliver/hand over new training and coaching
a positive, motivational coaching culture materials; provide individual ‘on-the-job’ coaching observation and feedback; run
‘coaching surgeries’; provide face to face or telephone-based coaching and
support for coaches
Coaching framework Design a programme to deliver appropriate, Review existing coaching process and practice; design structure and processes for
individual coaching to employees at all levels effective and time-efficient coaching; which enables regular, off-line, individual
coaching where interactions with customers / colleagues are reviewed and
evaluated to identify strengths and areas for development
Executive coaching Personal coaching and mentoring for key Work individually with key people to support, coach and mentor; build personal
individuals confidence and competence over time
Planning, facilitation Enabling executive and project teams to Facilitation of action planning sessions; project set-up meetings (including multi-
and teambuilding work together and collaborate effectively supplier relationships)and ongoing working parties; senior team facilitation;
teambuilding events (can include MBTI personality profiling)
Maintenance of high Alignment and ‘coach the coach’ activities to Design alignment processes; provide external quality alignment checks; run
standards and ensure consistency of interpretation of alignment workshops; design/deliver materials for further skills development;
consistency quality standards and continuous ‘coach the coach’ sessions – on-the-job observation and one-to-one coaching for
development and improvement and line managers and coaches
consistency of coaching and management
approach
Rewards and Reward and recognition frameworks that Review current reward and recognition frameworks and behavioural drivers;
recognition encourage and recognise desired behaviours recommend/assist with design of amendments and/ or new frameworks
– and motivate everyone to strive for
excellence
Harding & Yorke – Enterprise Partnerships
In order to meet the growing demands of clients and to build on the strengths of Harding & Yorke and partner companies, H&Y build strategic partnerships and
joint ventures with other key players. This includes the following organisations: