Empathy! This is one of the vague terms I was fairly certain what it mean, but haven't realized its importance until it caused a vast impact on me. So I decided to know in detail what's empathy and its importance in the business world.
You might recall former US President Bill Clinton's famous quote, "I feel your pain." It says all about empathy. Empathy is the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another sentient or fictional being. It is the ability to put yourself in another's shoes and walk a mile.
It could be said that empathy in its purest form is the force that moves a business forward. For every organization, customer is king and for a business to experience success, they need to not just see or hear the activity around them, but also relate to the people they serve. Customer empathy(CE)- the ability to identify, understand, and respond appropriately to a customer's emotional state, before, during, and after the transaction is the key when it comes to delivering a great customer experience.
Organizations which focus on customer empathy, have strict quality check to ensure customer satisfaction. To ensure this, the employees are instructed to adopt a list of procedures while handling each customer. To an extent it's a sound excercise to ensure client satisfaction. But when it comes to a situation where employees are overloaded with customer issues, will it be possible to trace each and every statement in the checklist? Many companies, while trying to implement customer empathy, fail here. ie, they fail to notice their own employees sweat over machines,race towards deadlines or crunch data. Instead of firing the employees for violating their documented customer empathy rules, the top authority should have taken a moment to understand why this happened; then they should have realized that employees are also human beings and not some machines loaded with CE software and empathy checklist. It is here where the employers have to recognize the importance of employee empathy.
Employee empathy is critical skill for one, simple reason-trust. When an employer/leader shows that he/she is aware of the employees' feelings and appreciate those feelings, it builds trust. The employee has faith that the concerned authority will atleast hold their opinions into consideration. An employer can then employ this intellect of their touches to give the employees what they require to follow, further fortifying the relationship, increasing collaboration and improving productivity. Empathizing with the employees can inspire employee loyalty and dedication to the company and its goals.
Without empathy, a person might command people without regard to workers limitations or needs, and end up losing respect and cooperation from subordinates who regularly feel dismissed. Then the employees will always have their guards up. They will feel like they have to look out for their own emotional interest. While with an empathetic leader, the employee knows that their feelings will never be simply overlooked or ignored.
This picture says all about the relation between customer empathy and employee empathy. It's not rocket science! It's so simple that the employers need to realize just two scenarios:
1. First and foremost they have to realize and accept the fact that customer empathy is directly proportional to employee empathy.
"Satisfied employees transfer their enthusiasm and commitment to customers. This in turn enhances customer satisfaction, driving additional business opportunities and revenue generation", says Karen Price, chief executive of E-Skills UK, the organization responsible for developing the UK's professional IT skills.
2. Customer empathy could be achieved only when the employees are allowed to be themselves and to use their own abilities & personalities, rather than trying to force-fit them into being carbon-copies of some ideal corporate 'branded' personality with 'QA approved' behaviors.
Employers who fail to recognize these stand to lose out in the competition for a skilled workforce. Good workplaces are created through good attitude and thinking from management. Empathy for employees and consideration of work/life balance generates a particular company culture and finally leads to a successful organization in all aspects.
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