CHAPTER 6
Building Empathy
Empathy is a skill. It’s also the foundation for excellent complaint handling.
Some people are better at empathy than others. Whether you have the natural ability to empathize or only a little, everyone can improve this skill. It’s like in-line skating: If you skate every day, you will get better. You may never be a champion, but you can unquestionably improve.
In the same way, by practicing the components of empathy, you can learn how to emotionally tune in with your customers.
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The Power of Empathy
Your empathy tells customers that you understand what they feel. Regardless of the service or product you support, you have a tremendous opportunity to enhance your relationship with your customers by using the skill of empathy.
You can also create stronger bonds by learning to listen with empathy to everyone—complaining customers, internal colleagues, and even customers who want to praise you.
LTIO: How do you define empathy? Be as specific as you can. List any components of empathy you can think of. For example, empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feelings.
What will happen to how you relate with your customers if you connect to them with empathy?
Psychologist Carl Rogers wrote about the power of empathy, “A high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent . . . factor in bringing about change and learning.”1
Do you want your customers to change as they deliver a complaint, maybe from being uncooperative to cooperative? Empathy can make that happen.
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Empathy Is as Important as Refunds
Many people think the solution to a service failure is to throw money at the problem. “Give them a refund” or “Give them a discount on a future purchase” seems to be a standard answer. However, being empathic while listening to the customer often has a bigger emotional impact than compensating to solve a problem.
Discounts are always nice, and refunds without hassle are even nicer. However, it may not be enough if that is all that is offered. Customers may think that you are just trying to buy their good feelings, and they may walk away even more disappointed than if you had given them nothing.
Showing up for the customer with a spirit of generosity and empathic listening allows you to build on the partnership between the two of you and increase loyalty.
LTIO: What two things can you do to empathize with your customers when they have experienced a problem? We’ve provided two example situations.
Situation 1—A customer shows up for an appointment and is kept waiting. How can you both show empathy and let them know that next time you’ll call to let them know if your office is running late?
Situation 2—A customer calls about a mistake on their most recent invoice. It messed up their bookkeeping and also caused their credit score to drop. How can you both show empathy and let them know that it won’t happen again?
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Reading Emotions
Humans primarily display emotions on their faces in split seconds. If you want to show empathy, you need to read emotions quickly.
Our ability to read subtle displays of emotions influences how we relate to each other. But, of course, you need to be able to see faces to do this. Second best is listening as you can hear emotions in people’s voice, pauses, and speed.
By shifting our flexible facial skin, even with only forty-four facial muscles, we can express more than five thousand expressions! Some are easy to read, such as a big, happy smile. Anger is the easiest emotion to read by children, but people have been successful in identifying smiles at three hundred feet, or about the length of a football or soccer field.2
Paul Ekman, professor at San Francisco State University, has reduced the long list of emotions to just six. His six basic emotions— anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, and happiness—are experienced by everyone and are easily and quickly read across all cultures worldwide.3
LTIO: Go to www.ciag.online/44. List the dominant emotion you see on the six pictures in the exercise—one for each of Ekman’s six basic emotions. Then in the following six activities, you will read a complete description of these six basic emotions. This is an excellent start for learning how to recognize basic emotions quickly.
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Anger
Anger is usually not subtle. It’s nearly impossible to ignore if a person is furious. Sometimes anger shows itself in subtle ways, though you will generally see a clenched jaw, narrowed eyes, or brows that come together that make a wrinkle appear in the middle of the forehead. When people are angry, the chin juts forward, and their mouth turns downward. Some people show several of these signals. Sometimes customers don’t like to display anger, but it can leak out onto their faces with tiny telltale signs that CSRs can pick up if they watch carefully.
Many people will also bring their eyebrows together when they are puzzled. If you have this habit, a customer reading your face may think you are annoyed with them because they see anger. People who interact with customers in person need to be careful about furrowing their brows.
LTIO: In the square below, draw one or several pictures of someone who is angry. Sketch a face using the clues above. Don’t worry about your artistic talents.
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Sadness
Most people readily recognize a down-turned mouth as an expression of sadness. The eyes tend to move down as well. There is nothing “up” in an expression of sorrow; it’s all “down.”
Many people will sigh if they are sad or their breath will be shaky. At times, if you look closely, you can begin to see their chin shake. Sadness is not an emotion that most people want to repeat—especially in public. When people don’t want to show their sadness, they will hold their face tight so no quivering occurs. They may become silent because talking could set off tears.
Sadness is not one of the good emotions to see on a customer’s face, especially when they are leaving.
LTIO: In the square below, draw a picture of someone who is sad. Draw one face that depicts just sadness. Then draw another with a combination of sadness and anger, which frequently happens. Use the clues above, and revisit your drawings of anger as well.
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Fear
Fear is not an emotion many complaint handlers see unless they are delivering extremely bad news. Sometimes this happens if the customer has to return to work and deliver bad news to their boss about what you have offered as a complaint resolution.
Health-care personnel may see it if they have to deliver bad health news to someone, even if it isn’t the organization’s fault. Sometimes when a telephone call is about the size of a bill, a customer will become anxious. Sometimes bank officials may see glimmers of fear when they deliver bad financial news based on a customer’s credit rating.
Under most circumstances, you won’t see the fear that is so extreme that someone’s hair stands on end, but you may be able to sense the hairs raising on their body.
You will be able to see eyes that open up wide, with the brows raised and brought together. Most people will open their mouths, perhaps in anticipation of screaming or running away. Fortunately, fear is an emotion not too many CSRs see daily.
LTIO: In the square below, draw one or more pictures, of someone showing fear.
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Disgust
When looking for signs of disgust, pay attention to your customer’s nose. The nose always wrinkles or the nostrils flare when people experience disgust. Sometimes it can be just a tiny flaring of the nostrils for a brief moment. That tiny movement can tell you that the person you are talking with is disgusted.
Extreme disgust may be indicated by sticking the tongue out. Some people will even make a “yuck” sound so there’s no doubt about their feelings.
The eyes also narrow when disgust is experienced. The cheeks lift, and the upper lip is pushed upward.
Disgust may register if you disappoint a customer. They not only feel disappointed but disgusted that this has happened—again. Disgust is often followed by anger. You’ll know you’re in trouble when customers show you a disgusted signal.
LTIO: In the square below, draw one or more pictures of someone disgusted. Draw a face with slight disgust and then one with a lot of disgust. Again, don’t worry about your artistic talents. Sketch pictures using the clues above.
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Surprise
Surprise is a close cousin of fear. When people are surprised, the mouth takes on more of a smile shape. The eyes are not as wide open as when someone is afraid, and the jaw drops down even lower than when surprised.
Surprise can change into happiness if the surprise is a positive one. For example, a customer may be surprised if someone tells them the product they just picked up has a flaw. But the surprising news is that the CSR is going to find the customer a perfect replacement that is of higher quality than the original one the customer bought.
Surprise can also happen if the service provider tells the customer that there will be a more extensive selection of colors in the sweaters if they wait until next week or that a sale is about to start, then offering the item the customer wants at 25 percent less. These are good surprise feelings for the beginning of long-term customer loyalty.
LTIO: In the square below, draw a picture of someone who is surprised. Make it a big surprise. Fear is described in Activity 47. Following both sets of clues, you can make sure they look different.
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Happiness
Happiness is a great emotion to see. It also tends to be contagious, so you may feel it on your face as well. The cheek muscles get involved, pulling the upper corners of the mouth upward. The eyes narrow because the muscles around the corners of the eyes crinkle. Many say you can best detect genuine happiness by watching people’s eyes. You can also hear happiness in a person’s voice.
It’s possible to smile with the mouth and not involve the upper face. You see a false, polite smile if the eyes do not get involved. Crinkle lines will form by the eyes if the happiness expressed is genuine. Try it on your face right now. Put a polite smile on your face and then a genuine one. Notice all the differences that show up on your face with the two different types of smiles.
A genuine smile is the emotion you want your customers expressing when they walk away.
LTIO: In the square below, draw pictures of someone with a polite smile and someone with a genuine smile. Let joy and happiness shine through.
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A Case Study in Sharing Emotions
Learning to share emotions effectively is a competency. It can be taught, learned, and then incorporated into your daily behavior. Here is an example of empathy at work.
Financial trust professionals are in the unusual position of creating relationships with customers who typically remain customers until death. Trusts and estate professionals help people arrange their finances to settle everything when they die. Then the professional has to communicate and interact with the relatives of the deceased to make sure everything is carried out as planned by their loved ones. Few professions demand such a high degree of empathy, and one would think that trust professionals would be prepared for the levels of emotionality their customers display.
Nonetheless, one survey revealed that 84 percent of financial trust clients felt their trust professional did not understand the pain they went through after their loved one died. In other words, they didn’t think the professional showed any empathy.
This lack of understanding prompted most of these customers to want to work with someone else for their future financial needs. They specifically said they wanted to switch.
The trust officers themselves also felt overwhelmed. They formed close relationships with their clients, and many were distressed when they died. But they all behaved as if nothing unusual had happened. The trust officers thought this was how they “should” behave—that is, not to show any compassion.
One financial institution offered their trust professionals grief training to learn how to react to the beneficiary’s pain. They would also learn how to more honestly deal with the pain they themselves felt.
After the training, the customers no longer felt their pain was ignored, and they didn’t want to switch to another company.
Another trust and estate company worked with Janelle to learn how to write more sympathetic complaint response letters when beneficiaries complained something hadn’t been handled. Janelle taught them how to use the Gift Formula and encouraged them to show empathy and compassion.
Again, after being showed more compassion, the company’s customers no longer felt like they wanted to look elsewhere to get their trust and estate needs met.
LTIO: Do you think showing empathy is your responsibility? While you may not deal with life and death issues, every complaint handler has to deal with problems and the emotions of customers who are experiencing loss. Write how you could respond with compassion in the following four situations:
A customer is emotional because they didn’t get to their destination on time as their flight was delayed or canceled. What could you say to show compassion?
A customer is irritated because a particular product is not available. What could you say to show empathy?
A customer is upset with a computer problem that feels insurmountable. What could you say to show concern?
A customer feels rejected when they are turned down for a bank loan. They feel the reason for the loan rejection was unfair. What could you say to convey compassion?
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What’s My Impact on My Customers?
Many of us define what we do at work as the functions we perform. For example, many complaint handlers define their work in the following ways:
• “I identify and fix computer problems.”
• “When customers complain about incorrect billings, I check invoices.”
• “I take back products that customers don’t want and refund their money.”
All this could be true, but it doesn’t describe the impact of these tasks on customers.
Imagine if a customer could rewrite the CSR’s job description in terms of impact on them, the customer, what would they say? Here’s an example. You troubleshoot credit card issues, such as fraudulent use of credit cards. Your impact description might be “I enable my customers to breathe a sigh of relief knowing that we have their back when a thief uses their credit card to charge things they didn’t buy.”
This is the emotional component of complaint handling for customers.
LTIO: In one sentence, write a description of how your work affects your customers from your customers’ point of view. Do this about two different aspects of your customer work.
1. Describe one task you perform as a service representative or complaint handler.
Now write the impact this part of your work has on your customers. You can start your one-sentence description with the following words: “I help my customers,” or “I enable my customers.”
2. Now describe another piece of your work you do for customers.
Write the impact of your work on these customers.
LEARNING POINT: We do things for our customers, but sometimes we forget the impact our help has on them. And it’s this impact that has a profound emotional effect on our customers.
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What’s Important to My Customers?
If you know what is essential to your customers in various circumstances, you can better empathize with them. Read the following examples and put yourself in the customers’ shoes. If you like, you can substitute examples if ours don’t match what you do.
LTIO: List at least two concerns your customers might have. You can share your answers with someone else to see if they agree.
Parents with three children are eating at a fast-food restaurant. One child spills a drink. What’s important to these customers?
You have run out of a particular product that is incredibly popular at this time of the year. What’s important to the customer who wants this product?
A shipping company has lost an essential package for a customer. What’s important to this customer in this situation?
LEARNING POINT: If you regularly practice asking yourself, “What’s important to my customers?” you’re beginning to listen with empathy. It’s almost as if you are reading their minds.
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SELF-CHECK: Building Empathy
When you see a customer having an angry reaction, how should you respond? Rank the following responses from best to worst. Discuss your choices with a partner.
Identify what the customer is likely feeling.
Tell them what they are feeling is normal.
Explain that yesterday another customer had a much worse time with their problem.
Tell the customer they should get control of themselves or you won’t be able to help them.
Simply observe until you can see what the customer will do next.
Apologize that you made them angry.
Ask for help from your supervisor.
Use the Gift Formula, and start by saying “Thank you.”
Without referring to the pages in this chapter, verbally describe what each of the six basic emotions look like. Explain how you might confuse them with each other.
• Anger
• Sadness
• Fear
• Disgust
• Surprise
• Happiness