Customer Support Leaders
Customer Support Leaders
From The Archives: 2: Mastering Empathy in Customer Support; with Matt Dale
Empathy isn't just a buzzword—it's the cornerstone of exceptional customer support. Discover the transformative power of understanding and walking a mile in your customer's shoes with Matt Dale, a consummate expert in the field. We peel back the layers of customer interactions and examine how empathy can be more than a trait; it's a skill that, with the right training and mindset, can be honed to perfection. Whether you're born with a natural inclination to empathize or find it more challenging, this episode promises actionable insights to elevate your support game to new empathetic heights.
Matt not only sheds light on the parallels between physical and emotional skills, but also provides a practical framework for integrating empathy into your team's DNA from day one. Drawing from his rich experience with educators, he illustrates how context and understanding are instrumental in transforming potentially frustrating support scenarios into opportunities for connection and resolution. As you tune in, prepare to be armed with the strategies that can turn any support team into an empathetic powerhouse, making every customer interaction not just a transaction but a genuine human connection.
Hello, welcome to the Customer Support Leaders podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today we're listening to one of my favourite episodes from the archives. I'd like to welcome to the show today my good friend, matt Dale. Matt, I'd love your opinion on how important you think empathy is in customer support. Do you actively foster it in the team? Do you think it's a skill that can be taught, or is it more of a character trait that you've just got or you don't got?
Matt Dale:I agree that I think it's very important, as people who are support professionals, to be able to understand where customers are coming from, to be able to relate to them in their struggle and understand, kind of how they're seeing the world and then help them go from that point to where they have successful resolution of whatever they're, whatever they're struggling with. When we're able to get into their heads and walk a mile in their shoes, so to speak, it makes us more effective, I think, as a support professional. So I think it's a valuable skill, just like any skill. I think we all as human beings come with a based on our genetics and our upbringing. We have different um levels of ability in that area. You know some people are very empathetic and others are not.
Matt Dale:Not as much and and I think most folks can in any particular skill or area you can get better. Now that's not to say, you know, I, I love motorsports, I love watching racing and things like that. I like driving my car quickly and I like doing autocross. Say, you know, I, I love motorsports, I love watching racing and things like that, and I like driving my car quickly and I like doing autocross, which is, you know, go out of parking lot, a bunch of cones, and you try to put down the quickest. You know 30 seconds or whatever it is in between cones, and it's not as scary as going out on the big track and you know you're not going 120 miles an hour You're not usually, and things like that.
Matt Dale:And I'm a good driver. I am not Formula One material and I'm not at the level that a professional would be, and I have a friend and he's a better driver than I will ever be because he's just naturally better at it. You think about sports too. There's some people that are just very gifted at sports. There are people that are, you know, innately just aware of where their body is and they're able to be coordinated and stuff like that, and so just like those physical skills, I think. I think empathy is is is like that too.
Charlotte Ward:So I've met some folks, something that you're just a little more, just something you're a little more in tune with as a human.
Matt Dale:My wife, for example, danielle she's she is amazingly empathetic. She understands why people are thinking what they're thinking and why they're doing what they're doing. She's like, well, did you see that that's because of this? And you come to find out that she's exactly right. She's understood the motivation behind it. She understands why they're feeling the way they're feeling. I'm a little less on that scale.
Matt Dale:To bring that all back to support, then I think it's helpful to work as part of the onboarding process and part of the training process to ensure that your people are developing those skills of empathy whether they have them and then helping to hone them and get them to feel the right amount for the customer, or whether they don't have them as much and helping them understand where their customers are coming from. So, for example, our customer base is primarily teachers and educators. Most of us have gone through school at some point or another, but we haven't been on the other side of the desk there. We haven't gone through what a teacher goes through no-transcript and then this is the only time of the day that they have students out of the classroom. They've got to get the grades set up properly so that they can finish the grading process tonight. Understanding, that.
Charlotte Ward:So your agents have got a huge amount of context. Yeah, so they're not going?
Matt Dale:oh, this guy's just mad at me because it's not because he's having a bad day, he's just got it like he's got five minutes right now and this is the only time today that he can have to get help. He's not angry at me, he's frustrated. He doesn't know what he's doing. How can I help de-escalate the frustration so that I can get him to where he needs to be, so he can do the job that he needs to do before his kids come rushing back in after recess and he can continue on with his day?
Matt Dale:There's one other aspect of empathy on support that I've noticed that I think is different, and that is people that are actually too empathetic, that they're feeling too much of what the customer is feeling and it actually impairs their ability to get the job done well. Like we have a software product, software is inherently broken, buggy, doesn't work the way it should, and you know we've had agents in the past where they felt really deeply oh my gosh, this is so bad for the customer, we need to get this fixed right away. Agreed that that is a problem for this customer and there's there's stuff going on, but it's affecting, you know, one percent of our population. That's not going to fit on the roadmap for development perspective over something that is affecting 30 of the population, and so, in being overly empathetic because they're naturally attuned that way, they might actually be doing the customer a disservice and our team a disservice.
Charlotte Ward:You're right. There is that absolute personal involvement which is not necessary in support Listeners. If you go over to customersupportleaderscom, you will find an article I wrote on empathy quite some time ago which talks about the type of empathy that you're talking about, matt, which is cognitive empathy. It's basically the ability to take on board that context, to understand intellectually and objectively what the challenges are that the customer is experiencing, but to rationalize it in a very objective way and allow you to still go through the problem-solving process. I think that's what you need. You don't want that level of personal involvement because it's not productive to the problem solving process but also you're going to burn out very quickly with that. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaderscom forward, slash two for the show notes and I'll see you next time.