Empathy training is a prerequisite in any business because it is important to see things from the client’s perspective. Empathy for the client’s specific requirements helps all teams involved in the production process build trust and credibility. Furthermore, the ability to build products that align with client demands and correspond with the client leads to enhanced client satisfaction.
Therefore, empathy skills training is important for any department because client success depends on such consistent performance from all stakeholders. The objective of such training is to ensure that the customer service team can make the client feel heard and valued.
Furthermore, empathy training helps customer service employees hone soft skills like emotional intelligence, effective listening and effective communication. In this article, let us try to enumerate the reasons why empathy training should be a must for customer service employees and what should be included in the scope of such training.
Why must companies stress empathy training?
Research shows that 75% of customers who have had a good customer service experience would let at least six people know about the same. Again, it has been seen that 13% of customers who have had a negative experience would share the same with at least 15 people. Therefore, empathising with the customer becomes a prerogative for customer satisfaction because it will lead to the following positive outcomes.
Easy to reach support
The best way to make customers feel comfortable dealing with customer support is by letting them connect through their preferred channels. Customers may be comfortable with chatting rather than talking over a call, and that should be respected. Furthermore, social media is becoming increasingly popular for this purpose, and this demand must be accommodate by businesses. Ensuring flexibility concerning communication channels immediately puts the customer at ease, and they are more likely to engage with the company in the future. Thus, a simple step can go a long way to earn loyal customers, and thus, increased revenues.
Fast resolution of issues
If there is one thing that customers hate, it is the late resolution of issues. They see it as the company’s unwillingness to provide after-sales assistance and does not sit well with them. Furthermore, it is not an empathetic attitude to have the customer explain the same issue multiple times to different customer service executives. It must be kept in mind that customers have already been facing a pressing issue that must immediately be resolved while reassuring them about the same. As a business, you can rely on Atidiv’s chatbots and help centres, which make for additional assistance to the customers in case they have an urgent query to be resolved at an hour when human agents are out of office.
Acting on customer feedback
Feedback forms are something that even the biggest players in e-commerce and other industries rely on. Customers have to be made to feel important – and the best way to do this is to give them a space to voice their opinions and feedback. Sending out feedback forms is mostly automated, however, companies must take care that the form contains the appropriate fields that allow a proper expression of customers’ grievances. Once the detailed feedback is received, it should be acted on as soon as possible to achieve customer satisfaction.
Building relationships
The objective of empathy training courses is to help the customer service executive to understand the value of relationships. Customers need the company to be understanding, and if they have to repeatedly identify themselves with their registered phone numbers or by other means, they are not going to feel special. The catch is that whenever the customer contacts customer service, the latter should have all relevant details about the former ready, including the disputed order. It might sound like a simple point but it goes a long way in making the customers feel that the company cares about them and not just revenues.
Reading the room
Something that always puts others in a comfortable position is when they find others supporting causes that they care about. Most customers like to invest in businesses or buy from them when they find out that they care about inclusivity and diversity in the workplace. This ethical solidarity goes a long way in building lasting relationships that convert into revenues. To cite data, 73% of customers believe that companies must act in the interest of the greater good. It is an interesting statistic to read into, and empathy training for employees must inculcate such values in customer service personnel.
Focusing on employee experience
It is not difficult to understand that employer behaviour towards employees reflects in employee behaviour towards customers. Thus, if employees can be kept happy, customer satisfaction can be enhanced. Very small but crucial things can help build a healthy relationship between the employer and the employee. For instance, if employees are encouraged to put up a ‘busy’ status on their work channel so that they can take a short break, they can use this breathing space to destress and perform better.
What should be the scope of customer service empathy training?
Empathy training can only make a difference if it is incorporated regularly into daily use. Certain basic skills have to be mandatorily developed by the customer service agents to avoid hampering company goodwill before the clients. Let us take a look.
- Focusing on listening: Quick problem-solving is important, but it is not the first step to take while dealing with customers. The first step, rather, is to listen to what the customer has to say. Keeping patience is important even when the customer service executive knows what it is about or is aware of a mistake on the part of the customer.
- Recognizing bias: This is the point where empathy training for customer service becomes all the more important. Employees come from diverse social and economic backgrounds, and thus their understanding of bias might be rudimentary. Empathy training aimed at removing biases concerning gender, creed, or race might be very important because these are sensitive issues. Customer service agents cannot take a wrong step here, which is why empathy training assumes paramount importance.
- Stress management: Work-related stress can be a reason for reduced levels of empathy in individuals. Empathy training should take up this issue with care, using tools like shared identity and experience with the subjects so that they can relate with the issue at hand without being egotistic. Stress management tips like mindful breathing must become second nature for employees so that they can remain calm in real-life scenarios and work in favour of customer satisfaction.
FAQs On Empathy Training
1. What importance does building customer relationships have in customer service?
Customer relationships are strengthened with the help of better customer satisfaction. Again, customer satisfaction is not possible without forming a good relationship with the customer. Finally, without empathetic behavior, a customer service executive cannot establish a pleasant relationship with the customer or reduce churn.
2. Is empathy training related to customer satisfaction?
Yes, they are related. Empathy training not only makes employees ready for quick resolution of issues but also makes them good listeners. Thus, customer service executives can comfort the customers even before solving their problems, which leads to better customer satisfaction.
3. Why is dealing with stress management important?
Stress can make customer service employees less responsive to customer issues, which might come across as non-empathetic. Since business goodwill might be at stake with such repeated instances, stress management is an important skill to master.
