Customer Support Leaders
Customer Support Leaders
From The Archives: Episode 3: Nurturing Empathy in Customer Support with Natalie Ruhl
Nurturing Empathy in Customer Support with Natalie Ruhl
How can you genuinely connect with your customers and create a more harmonious workplace? Join me in this enlightening episode from the archives of the Customer Support Leaders podcast, first broadcast in January 2020, where I sit down with Natalie Ruhl, Director of Community Operations at SoundCloud. Natalie delves into the core of empathy, revealing how it serves as a fundamental pillar not just in customer interactions but also in effective teamwork. Whether you believe empathy can only be inherent or think it can be coached, this conversation will challenge and expand your understanding. Natalie shares the innovative methods her team employs, from role-playing scenarios to reading emails aloud, to nurture and enhance empathetic skills.
Discover the delicate balance between empathizing with customers and maintaining objective judgment, a skill crucial in avoiding potential pitfalls. Natalie emphasizes the importance of empathy in career progression within customer support and beyond, offering practical tips to integrate empathy into daily practices. This episode is a goldmine for anyone eager to refine their empathetic approach and improve their professional relationships. Don’t miss out on these transformative insights that promise to elevate both your personal and professional growth.
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 would like to welcome to the podcast today my good friend, Natalie Ruhl. Natalie, could you introduce yourself?
Natalie Ruhl:Hi Charlotte. My name is Natalie Rule and I'm currently the Director Community Operations at SoundCloud.
Charlotte Ward:Cool. Today we're talking about empathy. What are your thoughts on empathy and customer support?
Natalie Ruhl:Empathy, for me, is absolutely one of the I want to say pillars of any kind of workplace behavior. It's something that you need that doesn't just lend itself to customer support, where you interact with outside people, but it also lends itself to working in a team and working with other people within an organization. Do you think it's teachable as a skill? It's certainly something that I think some people have more of, some people have less of, but I also think that it's absolutely something that you can teach at least awareness of. I want to say the skill here is more being able to very quickly kind of see eye to eye with a stranger, like find a level with someone with a stranger, or like find a level with someone, and empathy is a big part of that.
Charlotte Ward:but at the same time, it's not the most important skill I want to say. So do you hire for it or do you? Or do you coach for it, or is it a combination of both?
Natalie Ruhl:It really depends on, on the person. I think we definitely have both kind of personality types on the team. In an interview situation, we always try and ask questions around empathy or around the general put yourself in the customer's shoes kind of situation. However, not everybody jumps on those and that's fine. That's absolutely fine, because I think it can be something that is taught. Especially, we use quite a lot of role play for this. We create a persona of our classic customer to help people kind of like have a face or like an idea or shape of like the person that they're talking to on a daily basis.
Natalie Ruhl:We don't use phone, which oftentimes I think can make it a bit more difficult as well. Don't use phone, which oftentimes I think can make it a bit more difficult as well. Um, reading a situation out of an email can can sometimes be quite hard. So we try and encourage people to sometimes even like read an email out aloud to kind of get a bit of better feeling for it. Uh, it is something that you learn over time and it is a great thing to learn because it's also one of the things I think that is a key skill as you grow from the level one agent to grow within support or to even grow outside of support. It's a key skill to have to kind of understand what motivates people and how do you do that?
Natalie Ruhl:People, uh, do things. What? What drives them? But we certainly try and like create this awareness very, very quickly, because I feel it helps out a lot in the very repetitive, sometimes stressful world to know that there is someone that is like picking up on your cues. Empathy can come in so many shapes and forms and it can sometimes also be too much. You know empathy goes a certain length, but then you might not, um want to empathize too much because it can cloud your judgment or it can it might be unhelpful in the situation getting too personally involved.
Charlotte Ward:Um, yeah, and also, it's not just about clouding judgment. Necessarily it can stop you from coming to a solution and maybe also cross boundaries, you know? Yes, absolutely. So I'm interested in what you said there about, uh, role play and encouraging people to read out emails and communications aloud to see how they feel it. Is that part of the role play that you consider, or do you do more formal exercises?
Natalie Ruhl:Again, it depends on the kind of person. I don't think we usually do the one where we set someone in a room and we kind of like, let me play the customer now and you be that one, and then we reverse roles to see, because I found that there are some people that thrive on those. You know, these are probably people that also love a stage, but not everybody in my, in my team, is that kind of person. So, mentioning things like well, but have you considered that this is where this person is at? Or ask a couple of questions, um is more how I think empathy is less awkward for people. Often, you know, like less intrusive or like more timely.
Natalie Ruhl:There are difficult conversations to be had and then we might role play it out. But in the general day to day, oftentimes it's just like well, I get that. This you know particular query or ticket you've been getting from this customer seems maybe hilarious to you, or like oh, I do not understand how that customer couldn't solve that problem on their own. But we oftentimes also use um images of like well, just think about your mother, you know, probably not the tech savviest. Or we all know this person that um isn't the tech savviest, and how would you help them? You know that's clear to me, but is that clear to this other person that isn't working in my role, that doesn't have all this experience with this product? It's sometimes dialing back to simplifying things, not in a patronizing way, but empowering someone to achieve the result on the other end when you're coaching for empathy, you're doing it real time.
Natalie Ruhl:mostly you're encouraging certain, certain types of behaviors for certain tickets, but also we use a tool where, from the leadership side, we review a few conversations per week and look at where maybe was something not formulated or spelled out quite right, or where someone may be giving a detailed explanation or using confuddled sentences, whatever it may be, in order to help them to communicate better.
Charlotte Ward:Is that part of a wider quality review program? Yeah, that's all for this session. Go to customersupportleaderscom. Forward, slash three for the show notes and I'll see you next time.