6 Ways to Show Empathy to Customers

Building a rapport with your customers is an essential part of any organization providing good service and increasing sales. Whether the customer comes up with a complaint or has any query, an empathic gesture and conversation can lead to the encouragement for the customer to choose your service.

Therefore, it is extremely crucial to deal with all your customers with empathy and show concern about whatever issue they are facing genuinely. For a customer service person, it is important to prioritize your customer over your personal convenience.

Regardless of the situation, if you show empathy towards your customer, they will understand you better and even appreciate your concern for them. This article will guide you through some of the best ways to show empathy for your customers. Let us have a look at them.

 

Top Ways to Empathize with your Customers

Empathy can be defined as the ability to judge the other person’s emotions and sense what they might be feeling and accordingly act on that particular situation. Some of the best ways to show empathy to your customers are given down below:

 

Relating Honestly with Your Customers

When it comes to showing empathy to customers, different people have created their self defined meaning to the word empathy. Most people believe showing empathy means to create a remorseful face and keep apologizing for an issue.

Though apologizing for an issue shows care for the customer, it necessarily doesn’t demonstrate empathy and doesn’t provide any solution for the customer’s problem.

Empathy can be described as an ability to comprehend what the other person is feeling and what can be done as a positive outcome for the situation that the person is facing. If you have the ability to understand that, you will genuinely relate with the customer and try to offer him the best solution that is in your hands.

In any kind of situation, there is always a detail or certain event that becomes a common parameter between you and the customer. Once you are able to trigger an emotional connection with the customer, they will be more willing to listen to you and trust your solution.

Therefore, instead of repetitively apologizing, it is much wiser to genuinely apologize, understand their concern, and give them the best solution for that particular situation.

 

Actively Listen to the Customer

Active listening is one of the essential things to do when a customer is depicting their problem. Active listening involves understanding the issue of the customer and in response asking them relevant follow-up questions.

The practice of active listening involves putting full attention to what the customer has to say. While the customer is speaking, don’t worry about coming up with a solution to the problem. Instead, be fully focused on the details that the customer is sharing with you about the situation.

Note their body language and tone to determine how they feel about the situation that they are describing. It will help you comprehend the situation thoroughly and will ensure that the customer does not have to repeat what he said, which often leaves the customer agitated.

 

Try to Make the Conversation Memorable

Everybody can agree on the fact that customer service jobs are hard. Representatives have to fulfill their daily goals and constantly under the radar of their manager. The focus to pull off the quantitative performance makes the reps compromise on quality most of the time.

This leads to low customer satisfaction as the reps start prioritizing their own needs over the needs of their customer. However, one thing should be clear – putting the customer first is more important than meeting their daily goals. It helps in better customer retention.

If you make the conversation with the customer memorable, it is likely that they’ll share their experience with others. Over 49% of customers say that they share their positive interaction with the brands on social media. This could lead to better growth for the organization.

 

Win the Customer with Your Language

Most of the time, it is not what you say to the customer that makes him furious or pleasant, but it is the way you say it. The tone and phrases you use in your language play a vital role in the response of the customer. Sometimes, even if what you are saying is beneficial for the customer, but your tone isn’t pleasant, the customer can get irate.

Especially if you are trying to explain something complicated to the customer, it is important that your language is subtle and soothing for the customer to understand it.  To make this happen, you can use words such as “we” or “us” that makes the customer feel as though you are working together with them as a team to solve the problem.

We all have been on the customer side of the interaction and we all know how it feels when somebody treats you with rudeness. Hence, it is important that you show a positive body and verbal language that can make the customer feel happy to have a conversation with you.

 

Personalizing Your Approach

A customer service representative knows that no customer issue can be treated in the exact same manner as the other. Different customers have different personalities, and it is the job of the rep to understand how to deal with different types of customers.

A rep that can entirely understand the requirement of the customer knows the right way to approach the customer to solve their problem and have a memorable interaction with them. To cater to this purpose, one must have to be empathetic to understand how the customer is feeling at that moment.

If you know how to respond to customer’s emotions and body language, you will handle the situation effortlessly. You need to bring confidence in your talk with the customer so that they can feel that they are in safe hands and will get a solution to their problem.

Even if you know the answer to the question from the start, you need to let them complete their set of questions so that they can feel satisfied at the end.

 

Provide Workarounds When Necessary

In a customer service job, the best remedy is to provide a long-lasting solution to the customer. (You can read our business tips here). However, it is not possible in all of the cases. Sometimes you need to give a short-time fix until you are able to find a permanent solution to the problem.

Such workarounds show empathy towards the customer as it provides a complete understanding of the problem to both, you and the customer. Though your intent is to offer a complete solution to the customer, in case the solution isn’t possible, you need to provide them with the next possible solution.

Also, make sure to voluntarily notify the customer when you get the solution to their problem. This makes them feel that you are concerned about their problem, and they will definitely stick to your organization for a long time.

 

Final Thoughts

Empathy is an excellent tool to make a customer feel that you are on their side. Showing concern and empathy makes the customer feel that you are determined to help them out. In return, customers show their appreciation for your efforts and end up staying loyal to your brand.