How to use empathy in customer service for companies?

No Dictionary, the word empathy means”form of intellectual or affective identification of a subject with a person, idea, or thing”. When we associate the concept with customer service, we understand that to improve the quality of the experience with the company, it is necessary to humanize the relationship.

‍

But after all, How to use empathy in customer service and effectively improve results?

‍

This work requires a lot of internal commitment, because as much as it seems and really is a subjective aspect of the service, customer reviews are able to capture whether the brand is empathetic or not.

‍

However, improving the perception of empathy in customer service is a Possible goal and there are ways to organize internal standards, set goals, and monitor results.

‍

Keep reading the article and learn how to align empathy and quality to provide good customer service.

What is empathy in customer service?

Empathy in customer service is the ability to identify and demonstrate understanding in the face of a customer demand.

‍

This is reflected in the tone of voice not only of the support operators, but also of all brand communication. After all, every company has the purpose of healing the pain of its target audience and must show that it recognizes and has proposals to solve it.

‍

Customer service that can demonstrate this standard in practice brings customers closer together, inspires brand loyalty, increases customer retention and business growth.

‍

The report on customer experience trends from Zendesk It highlights that more than 60% of customers state that they now have higher customer service standards. A direct consequence of the pandemic and current consumer behavior in the digital age.

What is the importance of empathy in customer service?

Another relevant fact from the Zendesk 2022 report is that 61% of the interviewees stated that they would migrate to a competing company after having just a bad experience with the current company.

‍

A bad experience can include several scenarios such as:

‍

• the operator being rude to the customer;
• the customer is unable to obtain a complete solution to the problem;
• the customer receives wrong information;
• the operator is unable to identify the problem and, consequently, the solution;
• the operator provides a very bureaucratic service without personalization, among others.

‍

Probably none of these scenarios are what you would like to see happening in your company, right? Therefore, it is necessary to be aware of the importance of empathy in customer service, as this is a strategic resource.

‍

Empathy isn't just important for your brand to look good in front of others. This aspect is important for building long-term relationships and for the consolidation of the company in the market, also resulting in more sales and new customers.

How to use empathy in customer service?

Now the question you don't want to shut up is: how to use empathy in customer service? To put this concept into practice, it is important to be aware of determining points of internal strategy.

‍

If the service process is well designed, the attendants trained and with constant feedback, there are good chances that the scenario will evolve. Here are some tips that may help with the adjustments to be made.

Get to know your brand personality

Yes, brands have personality, just like a person, and empathy and Call tone they will come from the mastery that one has of that knowledge.

‍

Thus, if the predominant personality trait is the most formal, the communication language must be the same across all channels — website, app, online chat, social networks, sellers, customer experience (CX) analyst, and others.

‍

The language used, in turn, Give security to the customer, because he understands the tone of the interaction. So, personality is an important base that needs to be disseminated and trained with the company's teams.

Humanize and personalize each contact

Another way to use empathy in customer service is humanize and personalize contact to increase customer satisfaction.

‍

A company can use several channels and resources to optimize service, but it is necessary to pay attention to customer responses regarding the quality of service in each one.

‍

Bots, for example, tend to have lower CSAT ratings than human agents, which is understandable since not everyone gets along well with this feature.

‍

But an attendant who doesn't customize the macros (pre-ready responses) for their calls according to customer demand and interaction also has a low CSAT.

‍

For this reason, The less robotic and the more personalized, next and Humanized for service, the higher the customer's satisfaction with the service tends to be. So, it's important for managers to give consistent feedback to the team, signaling improvements and advising how to do them.

Implement Customer Service Quality Assurance (QA)

The term Customer Service Quality Assurance (QA) Means quality assurance of customer service in Portuguese. It is an internal process that audits conversations and provides regular feedback to improve team performance and a company's overall support process. To implement this monitoring, it is necessary to:

‍

1. Define vision and objectives with support: the business establishes what quality means according to what is most important for the development of the company and customers;
2. Create internal quality standards: based on the vision and objectives, the service guidelines to be followed by the team in the interactions are defined. These criteria also help define the evaluation parameters used in QA;
3. Designate who will perform the evaluations: many companies define an internal professional as the service manager or hire companies specialized in QA;
4. Organize how and which conversations will be audited: it is possible to make a random selection or evaluate all tickets depending on the volume, size of the team and the auxiliary tools used;
5. Create a feedback flow within the team: in addition to individual feedback, it is important to have group conversations, present QA progress and encourage improvements.

Discover what is essential for your service

Learning how to use empathy in customer service is an important step in the quality of the support service, but doing so may require further adjustments. Having the support of a specialized company contributes greatly to the success of the changes.

‍

A Cloud Humans can be your partner in this work, helping to assess and adjust service standards and train professionals to provide a humanized, fast and assertive service.

‍Talk to our experts who are available to present our solution and show how much it can help you achieve your business objectives.