Empathy is Critical to Customer Experience
Exceptional Customer Experience goes beyond simply providing frictionless and consistent interactions that satisfy your organization’s desired business outcomes. The modern customers’ baseline expectation is that every touchpoint with your brand is seamless, personalized and effective. To meet these expectations and grow a loyal customer base, brands need to develop a sense of trust with customers.
Customers want to trust your brand and feel as if they have developed an authentic relationship with you. To develop this trust, you must clearly demonstrate that your brand truly sees, hears and knows your customers beyond the products or services they have purchased from you.
Instilling empathy into your CX strategy and delivery is key to developing this trust. An empathetic approach to CX will enable you to communicate to your customers that your brand has an awareness of your relationship with them. Understanding empathetic CX and how to use it in your CX strategy can transform the experience you provide to your customers.
Defining Empathetic CX
em·pa·thy (noun): the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experiences fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
Delivering exceptional experiences to your customers begins with understanding the journey they go through when engaging with your brand, as well as their unique needs and expectations. Taking an empathetic approach to CX is about being able to walk in your customers’ shoes and more deeply understand who they are beyond their interest in your business.
Empathetic CX is about the feeling a customer has when working with your brand and your ability to satisfy their desire for a relationship. The collaborative efforts behind the scenes create a seamless interaction through individual touchpoints and tech-driven processes, but a holistic approach based on a customer's actions, tendencies and business history delivers the best experience.
See Your Customers
Each customer is on a unique journey that has led them to your business and product or service. When a customer works with your organization, they want to feel like your business aligns with their values and understands their needs. It's critical that they feel like your organization sees them and recognizes them as a valuable customer.
When a customer reaches out, they want to feel as though you are aware of their needs and by their side throughout their journey. Your agents can leverage the system information that accurately depicts the customer relationship in order to do this. This information allows agents to ask insightful questions and connect with a customer about their lives. This can also highlight your brand’s commitment to recognizing customer relationships because of your ability to leverage this information.
Let Your Customer Be Heard
Validation can be one of the most important components of your relationships with your customers. Your customers want to feel as though your business genuinely cares for them and that you are trying to proactively and efficiently resolve any challenges they may be having. The validation they feel from this will completely shift their experience as they feel heard and valued by your business.
Encouraging your employees to practice active listening and to be available and empathetic to a customer when they engage with your business is critical. When your employees are prepared and confident in their approach, it will provide a much more effective and considerate experience for a customer, in turn strengthening their relationship with your brand.
Get To Know Your Customers
Customers today can see through false warmth and inauthentic intentions. They seek relationships with brands that match their values and satisfy more than just their functional and emotional needs. To provide empathetic CX, your employees need to be authentic in their approach to your customers and truly connect with them in a genuine way.
Companies that understand CX and its value to their overall business are the same ones taking the time to truly get to know their customers. They make the effort to ensure that with every aspect of their customer journey, they use the insights they have into their customers to provide a personalized and honest experience for each customer. They are also giving their employees the tools to connect and engage with customers to deliver an experience where the customer will feel known.
Get Started with Avtex
Empathetic CX results from brands using all the knowledge, tools and processes that ensure their customers are receiving the absolute best of their business. If your organization is ready to begin delivering empathy-based experiences to your customers, Avtex can help. Contact us to learn how our experts can help you develop the insight, strategy and tools needed to deliver exceptional – and empathetic – experiences.
