LL - Empathy and how it relates to Customer Happiness

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Having an understanding of the situation from their perspective can go a long way with helping customers who contact us when something has gone wrong.

It’s also discussing the things that are upsetting to them. It might be tempting and easy to dismiss their feelings because you don’t feel it’s as big a deal as they do or because you want to move on to helping another customer.

It’s also coming up with solutions to help get them out of that situation.

An example of that might be that a customer contacts in for help because their order didn’t arrive. When you track the order, you see that the order was marked as delivered and it was left on the customer’s porch two days prior.

Put yourself in the customer’s place -

How would you feel if this was your order? Maybe you are panicking because it contained a time sensitive gift, or medical supplies. Perhaps you are mad because you lost the item and the money.

How would you want someone to communicate with you about this issue? Are you looking for an easy solution or are you wanting to answer endless questions with hoops to jump through?

How would you want this to be handled? Would you want someone to tell you to file a claim with USPS and let us know how that works out, or would you like for someone to arrange to reship it to you even if it was just a one-time courtesy?

Sometimes, we’re helping people with things that aren’t quite so detrimental. Do we help them the same way we would someone who is missing their order? Yes! People are going to ask questions that you might have to turn to Google to solve.

Is it a tech issue and their Social Man videos are buffering? Why might you have that issue and what would you do to solve that for yourself?

Is it a question that’s actually related to an affiliate offer and they are asking you for help? Sure, they could also google elixir of eros, but they’ll be so grateful you took the time to find their contact information.

What if someone writes in with some general feedback about either their health history and struggles or relationship woes as a response to an email they received from marketing. Do we handle them the same way? Absolutely! How would feel if you received an email from a company that asks, how are you - please please let us know. So you take the time to sit down and write that email and send it off. What kind of response would you want to receive?

Sometimes, someone just needs to be HEARD.

The bottom line is that we are all customers.

I might have told this story already, but there is a company that makes baby products and they have a subscription service. I have it set up so diapers and wipes are sent to my granddaughter every 3 weeks. She will be 1 in July if that tells you how many deliveries that is.

For the very first time, my daughter in law emails me to let me know that they didn’t get the package at their door and it wasn’t in the apartment office, what do we do?? My response was to email their support team to explain what happened and ask for help.

Their response after 3 days (strike 1) was to verify the shipping address, and to tell me that these things usually resolve themselves. (strike 2)

I respond verifying that’s the address, and that the package has not been found. They then tell me that they spoke with someone at FedEx and we waited too long to tell them that the package was missing. (strike 3) But as a courtesy, they’ll do a one time replacement to an alternate address.

I was MAD Y’ALL but I was also raised in the south so I went another way. “Then I’ll be sure to let my daughter in law know she would need to let me know it didn’t arrive sooner, should this ever happen again. I’d very much appreciate a courtesy re-shipment, and it needs to go to the same address. I’ve been faithfully having your diapers sent to my granddaughter since she was born almost a year ago, giving your company $80 every three weeks, and this is the first time I’ve reached out for help. I’d appreciate a smidge of empathy.“

And what do you know? The next time I heard from them they let me know that I’d be receiving a confirmation email for the reshipment and tracking.

Our goal is to make every customer interaction the best it could possibly be. By implementing empathy, that goal is a little easier.

Be patient, be kind, be thoughtful, be heroes.

 Empathy examples:

● Thanks so much for your email

● We sincerely appreciate your feedback

● I'm very sorry

● I completely understand

● I can understand how frustrating it is when .

● I realize how complicated it is to...

● I cannot imagine how upsetting it is to...

● I know how confusing it must be when...

● I’m so sorry to hear that

● I hate that you had to make this call today.

● I’m glad you contacted us today so we can take care of this right away.

● It’s perfectly understandable that you’re very upset about what’s happened.

● We don’t like to see our customers upset and inconvenienced. We always strive to create a positive customer experience.

● I can see how important this is to you.

● I know this process can be confusing.