5 simple tips to cultivate EMPATHY in customer service

Summary

In this video, Riya from the Freshdesk Academy explores key strategies for cultivating empathy in customer support. She emphasizes understanding personal biases, engaging in empathy-building activities like reading fiction, maintaining a positive attitude throughout the workday, and gaining a deeper understanding of your customer base. Riya also highlights the value of teaching others about the product or service to strengthen empathetic interactions. By applying these techniques, customer support professionals can create more meaningful connections, making customers feel valued even if they don't always get their way.

Takeaways

• 😀 Empathy is crucial in customer support as it helps build better connections with customers from diverse backgrounds.
• 😀 Recognizing and addressing your own biases is important for providing fair and consistent support to all customers.
• 😀 A helpful exercise to overcome biases is to ask yourself if you would react the same way to a different customer.
• 😀 Reading fiction helps improve empathy by encouraging you to see the world through different perspectives.
• 😀 Engaging in activities like watching fictional drama, volunteering, and meeting new people can also help cultivate empathy.
• 😀 Maintaining positivity throughout the day is essential for providing empathetic support to every customer, regardless of the time.
• 😀 Keeping track of your emotions and identifying the triggers can help you stay motivated and positive in customer interactions.
• 😀 Understanding your customer base is key to empathizing with them, as it helps you relate to their concerns and challenges.
• 😀 Teaching others about your product or service increases your awareness of customer pain points and strengthens your empathy.
• 😀 Empathy in customer interactions makes customers feel valued, even when they don’t get exactly what they want.

Q & A

Why is empathy an important skill in customer support?

Empathy is crucial in customer support because it helps representatives understand and relate to customers from diverse backgrounds, enabling them to offer better, more personalized assistance.

What are biases, and how can they affect customer support?

Biases are unfair, snap judgments based on factors like language, accent, age, or gender. In customer support, biases can lead to misinterpretations of problems, such as assuming a tech issue is user error based on a customer's age.

How can customer support professionals overcome their biases?

An effective exercise to overcome biases is to ask yourself if you would react the same way if the customer were someone else. This helps challenge automatic judgments and encourages fairer treatment.

How does reading fiction help improve empathy?

Reading fiction allows individuals to see the world from different perspectives, which can enhance their ability to understand and connect with others. This technique is particularly effective in increasing empathy in children.

What other activities can help improve empathy besides reading fiction?

Other activities include watching fictional drama, volunteering, and meeting new people regularly. These experiences help people put themselves in others' shoes and better understand different viewpoints.

Why is maintaining positivity important for customer support representatives?

Positivity helps ensure that customer support professionals can maintain consistent empathy throughout the day, treating each customer with the same care and attention, even when dealing with challenges or long hours.

How can customer support professionals track their emotions to improve empathy?

By observing their emotions for a week and noting the triggers behind positive or negative feelings, customer support reps can identify what motivates them and what demotivates them, allowing them to focus on the positive factors that sustain their empathy.

Why is understanding the customer base important for cultivating empathy?

Understanding the customer base helps customer support professionals relate better to their needs, challenges, and expectations. The more knowledge a rep has about the customer, the more empathetic and effective they can be in resolving issues.

What role does teaching play in cultivating empathy?

Teaching others about the product or service you support helps develop empathy by providing insight into the struggles and perspectives of new users. It also helps customer support professionals better understand common pain points and respond with greater patience.

What is the impact of empathy in customer interactions?

An empathetic interaction makes customers feel valued and heard, even if their issues aren't immediately resolved. Customers are more likely to feel satisfied and appreciated when their concerns are met with understanding.

What is the call to action at the end of the video?

The video encourages viewers to leave comments about how they cultivate empathy, like the video if they found it useful, subscribe to the channel, and click the bell icon for notifications. It also invites viewers to enroll in the Freshdesk Academy for more resources.