Over the course of my 35 years as a marketing and leadership consultant, I have witnessed the transformative effects of empathy firsthand. In recent years, business leaders have turned their attention to Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, often as it relates to managing a team. But it is an equally important trait when working with clients, and I have several thoughts on the topic.
Being empathetic, or having the capacity to share another person’s emotions, is a crucial trait for anyone working with customers. With empathy in customer service, you can forge a more meaningful rapport with your customers and better anticipate their wants and needs. In addition, empathizing with a customer’s situation improves your ability to understand their motivations behind making a request or voicing a complaint and, thus, your ability to provide a solution that meets those needs.
For instance, say you work in sales, and you’re pitching a new service to a client. Without putting yourself in the customer’s shoes, it can be easy to focus solely on selling the service’s features and benefits. However, if you show empathy toward the customer, you can tailor your pitch to first “seek to understand”, in the words of Stephen Covey, and ultimately meet their specific needs. The client will feel like you have heard them and are responding with a solution tailored to their needs, so the likelihood of making a sale increases significantly.
It’s easy to lose sight of the human aspect of your clients when you’re focused on the nitty-gritty of your work and checking off your to do list. However, you can only hope to provide service that surpasses a client’s expectations if you take the time to learn about their needs, goals, and obstacles. Customers are more likely to be satisfied with your services if they believe you truly “get them” and value their opinions. As a result, you might see an increase in devoted customers who keep coming back and enthusiastically spreading the word about your company.
To illustrate, say you run a restaurant and a customer complains that the food is too salty. You could simply apologize and offer to replace the dish if you approach this complaint without any empathy. In contrast, if you take an empathetic stance, you might ask the customer some questions about their experience and listen to their concerns. Perhaps they are dining with friends before catching a movie and are concerned about missing the show if they wait for a replacement. Maybe their doctor has told them to cut down on salt, and they are concerned about their health. As a sign that you appreciate their feedback and want to make things right, you may then offer to replace the dish or provide a discount on their meal. Because the customer will see that you are concerned about their situation and are willing to take action, the likelihood of them being satisfied with your service (and not leave you a nasty review on Google) will increase significantly.
Paying attention when talking to clients is vital. Hear them out and make an effort to put yourself in their shoes. One easy way to do this is to ask them open-ended questions and pay close attention as they respond. Investing in a thorough comprehension of their situation will allow you to address their concerns better and provide them with the assistance they require.
Doing whatever it takes to make a customer happy includes making proactive inquiries to find out if there is anything else you can do to help. Such actions can go a long way in establishing trust with your clientele and fostering long-term partnerships. A customer’s positive emotional experience with your company begins when you demonstrate that you understand and care about their needs.
Finally, it would be best if you worked to incorporate empathy into every aspect of company life. When all employees recognize empathy as a core value, it permeates every aspect of the company. This has the potential to increase employee happiness and morale, as well as customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customer empathy begins with your hiring process, continues with the behavior demonstrated by executives, and is reinforced through training.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of empathy in providing excellent service and making customers happy. You can differentiate yourself from the competition and build a more successful and fulfilling business by making empathy a priority in your client service and customer interactions and by embracing empathy as part of your company culture. Always keep in mind that when you show empathy in customer service, you boost not only the lives of the people around you, but also your own happiness and the success of your business.