Whether they’re angry, curious, satisfied, or searching for compensation, customers need to be convinced that we understand and care about them. They need our empathy. When we fail to show empathy, customers resist our solutions, insist on escalations, and contact us repeatedly. When we lack empathy, our customer service responses damage customers’ rapport with the brand. Plus, showing empathy is a form of decency. We owe our customers decency and kindness. It’s the right way to behave.

As a customer care leader, you’ve probably given your agents lots of tools—templates, knowledgebase articles, software—and plenty of training to enable them to write accurate responses to customers. But have you also devoted equal time to help them develop, and express, empathy in their responses?

Because customer service work can be stressful and repetitive, agents’ natural capacity for feeling and expressing empathy can suffer on-the-job damage. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to protect and develop agents’ empathy, which is as essential to successful customer service.

What you’ll learn:

• How to mine the customer’s incoming email, chat or tweet for the facts or feelings that call out for empathy
• Which empathy phrases will always sound sincere and which ones can sound cheesy
• How to express empathy without implying that the customer’s right when they’re actually wrong
• How to express empathy without incurring legal risk

Who should attend:

• Customer care leaders and managers