Customers respond to empathy by rewarding you with their loyalty

– seek first to understand and then be understood   

When you deliver your promise to the customer, you are setting the stage for a relationship that is unending and could yield great results in terms of your market reach and sustainability. Your service delivery story starts with a customer. That customer is wowed by your gesture and, like the woman at the well at Samaria, “goes to town to tell everyone about the Jesus who they have met”. The story spreads like wildfire and then many more people are keen to experience what they have heard. A bit like a friend telling about his or her trip to Dubai and after the story from experiences, the next is to urge you to go and see for yourself.

As a business, seek to deliver memorable services. Yours may be a commercial venture; however, if you provide it wholeheartedly, you end up exceeding the customer’s expectations. The most important thing is to be consistent at it. How, does a business consistently deliver a service such that it is intentional about understanding customers and committing to deliver the service they desire and even seek to exceed their expectations? The key is to always seek to understand before being understood. A friend shared a story with me recently about a situation where the customer service representative had completely lost touch with the needs of the customer.

It goes like this. A customer comes into a bar to be served and finds that being indoors is not exactly appealing for her so she realises that the outside has beautiful shades and would serve her taste well. Accordingly, she requests to be given a table outside where she can enjoy the fresh air and the bustling outdoors. She talks to the waitress and she responds somewhat dejectedly, failing to understand why this customer wants to be outside when everyone else is indoors. Her manager senses the moment and quickly steps in and grants the customer her request. Later, she learns from the customer that sitting in crammed indoors affects her health adversely.

She learns this about the customer and responds to the request, having understood the need of the customer. The manager offers the customer a personalised service and uses the opportunity to develop a relationship with the customer. The customer, on her part, is impressed that the business responded to her request and was prepared to bend backward to address her need. Both service provider and customer understand each other and this makes way for a relationship to develop. The fact is that engaging in meaningful customer-based activity can be hard to accommodate for any business; however, in the same vein, neglecting to address customer sentiments can prove costly.

In the words of Dale Carnegie when dealing with people, ‘remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.’ The question we must pose to ourselves is simply this: Do we know our customers? Do we know what they want, how ready or willing are we to find out and begin to address this need? It requires that we acknowledge sincerely that ‘we don’t know’, but we are going to find out. We must be willing to empathise with our customers. In other words, we must put ourselves in the customer’s shoes by way of experiencing what the customer experiences. Being dismissive of the customer’s request, however uncharacteristic, is not helpful.

Here are a few insights to help us sense the moment and respond proactively to customers. Perhaps, for a start, we can think about the internal mechanisms that will drive insights and enable us to identify where the pain points are. First, develop an emotional connection with your customers. Second, be intentional about empathy and train your employees to develop empathy for customers. Third, initiate and drive a digital strategy to enhance your knowledge base. Fourth, prioritise a customer-centric culture to ensure that staff are aligned with customer needs. Fifth, be alert to your pain points and be in readiness to address them promptly.

Emotional connection

A good many of us lack attention to detail when dealing with our customers. We get used to as many of them being around that we miss opportunities to develop strong ties with them. I recall an experience when I used to teach at a college in Vauxhall, a suburb of London. There was this café close by where I would buy breakfast on my way to work. The café owner was so friendly and would chit-chat with me every morning I stepped in there. It made his café so welcoming to me that I made it a point to buy breakfast from him anytime I was around. The emotional connection was very appealing to me and I craved for it whenever I was in the geography.

How you manage expectations with customers counts a great deal. The story is told of a cabin crew member on a Virgin Airline flight from Fiji to Melbourne in Australia. Most of the Fijians on board had never flown before and were flying to Australia to work for the first time. They discovered to their disappointment that the particular flight they were on did not serve meals in-flight and that one was required to have a credit card to order anything on board. This meant the poor Fijians would not be served a meal. One cabin crew member felt empathetic enough to go and brainstorm with colleagues on how to resolve this.

During their deliberations, a passenger in the business class overheard them and offered his credit card to serve all the Fijians on board. Initially, the cabin crew member was reluctant to accept the gesture, saying they did not want to inconvenience him. As it turned out, this passenger was the step-son of a late flight captain with the airline so he insisted, saying that his stepfather would have done the same. The Fijians got served; and they also discovered during the flight a nurse who was celebrating her birthday, they all joined in singing happy birthday to her. The mood was great as a result of one employee’s smart thinking. Connecting with customers can be rewarding.

Customer empathy

When you understand the feelings, emotions, motivations and frustrations of your customers, you show them empathy. Being empathetic means you don’t just see customers as users of your product or service but more importantly, you recognise their needs before you start considering your product. Begin the journey by first recognising where your customers are before they start considering your product. Note that this does not always come to one naturally. Years ago, when I was working part-time in the UK as a customer service agent, occasionally, we were asked to sit by some of our colleagues and listen in on their conversations with customers.

The rationale was to ensure that we learned to listen actively to customers, using words to offer support. The goal was to ensure that we not only ‘walked in the customer’s shoes’ but also use such techniques as voice tonality to convey empathy. This process was empathy training through coaching, shadowing and role-playing. A few examples of training employees to be empathetic include supporting them in engaging customers conversationally instead of ‘transactionally’. Transactional interactions come across as though the customer service person is reading a script. Training is imperative if you want your employees to be right by the customer.

Here is one example worthy of note. When a customer calls, we should ask them the necessary core questions to identify who the caller is. Then the employee should allow the customer to explain their situation and work to resolve it, as opposed to the employee making assumptions about the situation based on the customer’s few initial statements. Customers seek to be heard and understood; therefore, we should not take their words personally, especially when they appear upset. Through coaching and interactions, we can teach principles of customer interaction instead of focusing on core procedures. This way, we treat customers as people rather than personas.

Digital strategy

In today’s world of uncertainty and change, digital transformation and customer experience have become bedfellows. One of the core strengths of digitised platforms for customer experience is the capability it provides for businesses to deliver enhanced personalised experiences. Glenn Landmesser, Vice President of Digital Transformation at RiseNow – a supply chain management consulting firm based in the US, says: “It’s pervasive”. Many people today are craving the Amazon experience. Amazon, in over twenty years, are unparalleled in e-commerce. They have achieved this reputation through a combination of customer experience and superior products.

This keeps people coming back for more. They have been intentional about providing innovative logistical operations, ensuring that getting products from their warehouse to your doorstep happens with minimal intervention from the customer. They put great effort into every service. Regardless of whether you are buying or returning a product, the experience is effortless. Customers respond to this by giving their loyalty in exchange. Amazon’s App for prime members enables customers to get notified whenever products previously not in stock become available. Customers are offered flexibility in ordering using the Amazon App.

Social media has made businesses more accessible to customers. According to research, 72 percent of customers expect a response to a complaint in under an hour. Today, Customer Service via social media is imperative.  For example, businesses monitor Twitter handles frequently. The goal is to be positioned to carry the experience across multiple channels. Customers expect that wherever they meet the brand, they must be provided with the same customer experience regardless of the channel. As part of the mission to make life easier, artificial intelligence is used; thus, offering customers more than one way to shop. Going digital is the way forward for today’s business.

Customer-centric culture

Note that as a rule of thumb, when you show empathy, your customers notice it and they can identify that you care. While customer service representatives may not always be able to solve a customer’s problem, showing empathy helps customers to feel that their concerns matter. It reinforces that they are valued by your company. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and author Daniel Kahneman – known for his work on the psychology of decision-making and behavioural economics, among other areas – in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, says one of the most important concepts for anyone involved in or concerned with customer experience management is empathy.

As a customer, when you have an issue, you want someone to listen. You want them to fix your problem for sure – but you also want them to acknowledge your distress. Apple gets this. Their ability to know and care about what customers want, and then deliver on those wants, has given them a nearly spotless reputation. This desire to acknowledge and connect with their customers is evident in many aspects of their business. Mr. Kahneman sums it up nicely thus: “The effort invested in getting it right should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.”

When leadership recognises the importance of a customer-centric culture, it manifests itself in employee culture. The effect is priceless. As the experts have wisely posited, empathy is the ability to sense other people’s emotions and imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling. Empathy only implies understanding of their perspective, not necessarily agreeing with their position. The cabin crew member could have just walked away and lost nothing. He didn’t; he showed empathy. Having a customer-centric culture is the key to ensuring that the customer’s concern is everyone’s concern within the business. Note that culture is the way we do things here.

Pain points

Working consistently to identify pain points and resolve them efficiently is the way forward to keep your customers satisfied. The reality about the customer relationship is that things may not always go as planned. However, to demonstrate to customers that they can trust your brand or service, you must work earnestly to rectify pain points and deliver realistic solutions to customers. Here are three things pain points can do to your business. First, it costs your customers’ time. A customer hits a wall on his journey, thus, requiring a run-around customer service or a wait for escalation; this is not something they enjoy.

Second, it does not demonstrate their value. If they feel that their issue has been trivialised, they will not be amused. Years ago, my daughter was doing temporary work in a school. Her first stipend did not come through to her bank account so she followed it up with my help. After weeks of going back and forth, we finally discovered that the problem was from the bank. A typo error caused the automatic transfer to stall. When we found out, the bank official we were dealing with conceded that they had erred; however, he was adamant about any form of compensation. My daughter’s issue was not seen as important and they let it pass as something trivial.

Third, not addressing pain points makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. Your frontline agents are meant to be experts on the products or services you offer and as such, your customers expect them to know the necessary steps and information required for resolving any queries. When they are unable to do so, customers will lose confidence in your organisation and go elsewhere. Work hard and smart to remedy pain points of your CX journey to keep customers satisfied. Take time to identify what frustrates your customers and the gain in numbers of positive customer experiences will be worth the work.