Customer Service Incompetence: Empathy Only For Tears | #CX #PeopleSkills
by Kate Nasser | 3 Comments »
Customer Service Incompetence: Empathy Only When Customers Cry
How often do you get empathy when you are the customer? Do you get it often enough? Or are customer service employees insensitive to your needs? This is customer service incompetence. As The People Skills Coach™, I have seen insensitivity to customers — until the customer is brought to tears. The question is why does it take customer tears for employees to give them empathy?
Customer Service Incompetence: Empathy Only When Customers Cry. Image by Aldo van Zeeland.
Customer Service Incompetence: Empathy Only for Customer Tears
Being able to empathize with customers is an essential part of great customer service. Giving empathy only after you see tears is customer service incompetence. In waiting, you have created emotional scars. You have broken the customer’s trust.
People Withhold Empathy Until They See Tears Because …
- They are not listening to customer’s words and tone of voice. Most likely, they are too busy reading from a script and stating procedures.
- They feel overwhelmed by current work conditions. Instead of focusing on the customer’s stress, they are focusing on their own.
- Leadership has told them to enforce procedures. Yet, it is far better for leaders to say that procedures are a guide to giving great customer service. Procedures are not the goal.
- They don’t like themselves or they don’t like their jobs. In these situations, they are thinking of the customer as someone who makes their lives difficult.
- They have low intuition and/or low emotional intelligence. It’s not until the customer becomes very upset that they see the human need. However, you can develop empathy and see the need sooner.
- Leadership has not trained staff in how to develop and show empathy. They think everyone knows how to do it. However, what great leaders know is that pressures can bury empathy unless you train everyone on how to keep it alive.
And they don’t show empathy because …
Summary
Use this list to help all customer service employees show empathy sooner. You can prevent customer service incompetence and the damage it does to your brand. It is much easier to maintain customer trust through great service than it is to rebuild their trust.
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
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Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
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Spot on, Kate. Also, as a customer, it’s important to read this. Yes, we want and need great customer service but it can be helpful to see another perspective on what’s transpiring. Luckily, these are all fixable – hopefully before irreparable damage is done.
Best,
Alli
Hi Alli,
Many thanks for your addition to this discussion. My goal/hope is that reps and leaders read it and eliminate these missteps and delivery empathy every time. Although it can help customers to know there are reasons for reps insensitivity, it should never be the customer’s job to make reps feel better or excuse bad behavior.
It’s important that leaders and reps know that showing empathy is a key part of giving great customer care.
Best,
Kate
[…] People Withhold Empathy Until They See Tears Because …They are not listening to customer’s words and tone of voice. They are too busy reading from a script and stating procedures.They feel overwhelmed by current work conditions. Instead of focusing on customer’s stress, they are focusing on their own.Leadership has told them to enforce procedures. Leadership has failed to say that procedures are a guide not a big bat.They don’t like themselves or their jobs. They are thinking of the customer as someone who makes their lives difficult.They have low intuition and/or low emotional intelligence. It’s not until the customer becomes very upset that they see the human need.Leadership has not trained staff in how to develop and show empathy. by Kate Nasser | […]