Unlocking Empathy: A Journey into Your Customers' Perspective

• How do they purchase an item, schedule an appointment or service, pay their bills and get support for a problem?

• Where does the process break down? (e.g. abandon shopping cart, hang up on IVR, receive offers during a service issue)

• What are the pain points driving calls into the contact center? (e.g. bill confusion, lack of proactive communication)

Your job is to answer such questions by analyzing customer actions in context to better understand why they behave the way they do. Your research team can gather information about customer behavior through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys and customer immersion sessions (such as interviews and focus groups). Start with qualitative research that favors immersive and observational tools to connect with the human and uncover the “why” behind context, emotion and both implicit and explicit behavior.

With a better understanding of consumer behavior and needs, journey analytics and journey orchestration will aid continuous improvement of the customer experience, guiding customers toward the right actions to meet their needs in real time. When customers abandon their shopping cart, the journey orchestration engine sends messages via their preferred channel encouraging them to complete their purchase, perhaps by offering a discount. This intelligence prevents sending the wrong message, so customers who are on a customer service journey don’t receive targeted promotions. It improves communication by proactively sending delivery or application status updates.

2. Bring stakeholders along with audience empathy.

Front line, customer-facing employees should participate in customer research and immersion sessions firsthand. For example, when mapping appointment scheduling and reminder journeys, include the front desk employees who speak with patients directly. Patients who receive too many appointment reminders—even after they’ve confirmed their appointment—may become annoyed and complain while checking in.

3. Enable employees to act with empathy at scale.

Businesses need to enable empathy through people, processes and technology. Ritz Carlton empowers its employees to spend up to $2000 per incident to solve customer problems without a manager’s approval. An exhausted, jet-lagged traveler doesn’t have to speak with three people—or pay more—to be upgraded to a better suite when their air conditioning isn’t up to snuff, even if it’s the only category available. Prioritizing customer needs—and relationships—pays off for the luxury hotel brand, whose average customer will spend $250,000 with the Ritz over their lifetime.

Empathy allows employees to create memorable moments and lasting relationships . Identify opportunities to show customers you care about them as people—not just accounts. A bank customer just opened a home loan? Send them a congratulations note.

Chewy, a pet food and supplies e-commerce company known for outstanding CX, sends flowers to customers whose pets have recently died. Those satisfied, grateful Chewy customers often share their stories (and photos of the flowers) on social media. One Chewy customer tweeted about her “wow” experience when she called to ask about returning an unopened bag of food after her dog died. Chewy gave her a full refund, told her to donate the food to a local shelter, and sent flowers, with a note signed by the person she spoke with. That tweet got 750,000 likes and 50,000 re-tweets , and news outlets, including Time and Fortune, covered the story.

Combine MarTech With Empathy for Superior CX and Business Outcomes

While technology collects data and even executes decisioning, empathy provides the essential understanding of customers’ emotions, needs and experiences. By combining technology with an empathetic approach, CX teams create exceptional customer experiences that show you care–and lead to greater loyalty and customer lifetime value. Read the Forrester report, Spark, Nurture and Fire Up Empathy to Drive Innovation , to discover six more strategies to ignite empathy and supercharge CX.