“We simply need more loyal customers.”
The CEO was earnest in this request, and their goal made sense. Loyal customers return, spend more, and provide valuable insights that help shape business strategies.
But I’d argue the word “simply” is not entirely accurate. Loyalty — in any relationship — is earned over time by building on trust, reliability, and consistency. It’s not actually simple at all.
Essentially, we’re talking about building relationships. But what does it actually take to build a relationship?
Think about how we form relationships in our lives.
These same principles apply to customer relationships. We get to know our customers by gathering data to understand them. Then, we build relationships by reflecting that understanding and engaging them with relevant content and offers in the way they want to communicate.
(Well, that’s the IDEA, at least. I’d argue our customers probably don’t agree we get this right all the time.)
The third area — offering support — extends well beyond when customers encounter challenges, too. Great customer journeys meet customers where they are, amplify their joy or excitement, and quickly ease confusion or frustration.
At the heart of this? Empathy.
Empathy is fundamental to customer experience success, but it can feel abstract to many teams. (And it doesn’t exactly fit in the metrics and dashboards we use to communicate our success.)
So, how do we operationalize empathy? It’s a complex question. Many people have argued we can’t actually teach empathy, or even define it. So let’s tackle this complexity together, because it’s critical to explore what empathy is and how to embed it into your customer’s journey.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Merriam-Webster defines empathy as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.”
Empathy is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, viewing the world from their lens, and embracing how they think and feel in situations. It’s closely tied to compassion, which includes the desire to alleviate your customer’s pains.
(What it’s not: Mumbling “I understand your frustration” or greeting a customer with an on-hold message stating “you’re a valued customer.”)
Bottom line: Empathy is about action, not just words.
Understanding how customers think, feel, and behave is the foundation for delivering a remarkable customer experience. Every customer has unique needs and feelings as they seek your product or service. Specific experiences can be especially high in emotions, both good and bad (we’ll explore this more below).
Our friend Brooke Sellas, founder and CEO of B Squared Media, guides organizations in delivering unmatched customer support on social media. Empathy, as she explains, is what sets brands apart, especially considering how many interactions are digital.
“Empathy isn’t a ‘nice-to-have’ in CX — it’s the foundation of meaningful customer relationships,” she says. “Customers expect brands to meet them where they are, whether that’s on social media, chat, or other digital channels (let’s face it: IRL is happening less and less with younger shoppers). Without empathy, the customer experience becomes robotic and transactional. But when brands truly listen, acknowledge emotions, and respond with human-centered care, they create loyalty and trust that goes beyond the initial interaction.”
Well said, Brooke!
Customers experience a range of emotions throughout their journey, including peaks of excitement and depths of anxiety or confusion.
The moments that carry strong emotions are majorly influential in shaping overall customer satisfaction and loyalty. Some of these qualify as “Moments of Truth” in the customer journey. These can drive such emotions that customers decide to continue or leave.
Even seemingly routine interactions can evoke strong emotions. A strong customer experience strategy identifies and optimizes these moments to build trust.
Here are just a few high-emotion customer journey interactions:
Empathy helps businesses anticipate emotions at every touchpoint and respond in ways that build lasting connections.
Of course, every organization has distinct buying journeys and customer needs. A bank’s customer experience expectations and opportunities are very different from a clothing retailer or local service provider.
I like to say that you are having a customer experience if you’re paying a parking ticket or going to a Taylor Swift concert. These customer goals are different, but it’s up to us to provide great customer experiences. That means looking for ways to anticipate needs and remove points of friction — no matter the experience offered.
So, how can you start to build your emotional intelligence and find areas you can prioritize? As Brooke reinforces, it starts with customer listening.
“Empathy starts with listening. And in my world of social care, that means active social listening,” she says. “We’re paying attention and collecting data not just around direct brand mentions but to untagged complaints (aka “dark mentions”), sentiment shifts, and emerging concerns.”
Social media conversations and customer support interactions can help you deepen your customer understanding and feel the emotions of their experience. It can also be powerful to observe customers during their journey and walk through the process from their viewpoint, as our friend Alison Lichtenstein, senior vice president, customer experience design lead at Citi, explains:
“It boils down to walking the walk of your customer as much as possible. Additionally, experience your product or service through the lens of as many customer segments as possible to ensure you don’t have any empathy blind spots.”
I really like how Alison highlights the need to walk through the shoes of many different types of customers. Nobody has exactly the same customers for their products and services. We need to consider everyone to provide an inclusive customer journey.
Designing fully empathetic customer journeys may take some time depending on your resources and other priorities. There are several actions you can take to gradually strengthen your empathy and empower every employee to help customers navigate the spectrum of emotions they may face.
Customer journey maps are your blueprint for designing better customer experiences. If you don’t have customer journey maps or haven’t reviewed them for a while, use our customer journey mapping resources to get started.
Assign an emotional value to interactions during the customer journey. For engagements that may have high emotions, seek insights from customers and listen to their feedback or support interactions to understand how you can help them through these moments. Is there something you can do earlier in the journey to alleviate potential future negativity?
You may have tools that can help you with this. AI offers robust emotional sentiment analytics, and there are even ways to assess facial expressions and tone of voice. But if you don’t have these available to you yet, you still have data points like what customers share via feedback mechanisms like survey free-form text, and what frontline workers can share. We need to lean into understanding the true emotions and document that as part of the customer journey map.
Prioritize your interventions based on which moments are especially high in emotion or important for helping customers progress in their journey.
Before finalizing company policy changes, consider how they will impact customers, as suggested by our friend Greg Melia, CEO of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). He says:
“When making changes or establishing policies, make it a practice to ask yourself, ‘How will our customers feel about this?’ and ‘Are there any specific situations for which we should plan an alternative?”
This is a great reminder, especially for organizations that consider themselves driven by product release schedules or technology roadmaps. It’s easy to get caught up in those types of deadlines and simply forget to think about the customer. By including the customer as part of the standard process of design and development, we can predict how they might feel about various parts of the journey.
Brooke reinforces that listening for emotional cues is key for strengthening your strategy:
“One of the biggest missed opportunities in CX is failing to decode emotion in customer interactions. This is especially true when the channel is digital, and you must have a keen eye for digital body language,” she says. “A late response, a cold ‘we’re sorry for your inconvenience’ reply, or an overly formal tone can make customers feel unheard. CX leaders need to train teams to recognize emotional cues like frustration, excitement, and confusion. Based on emotional cues, they can then tailor responses accordingly.”
While you want to get ahead of negative emotions in the customer journey, don’t forget to also celebrate emotional highs and find ways to amplify those feelings. Just as people celebrate birthdays and big events with friends and family, your organization can celebrate customers as they reach milestones or anniversaries with your team. Celebrate their successes with them and be thoughtful about how you can recognize their milestones. (Just like you would with a friend!)
Customers can tell if company employees are reading from a script of approved messaging. Provide tips and key messages for employees to use, but leave room for them to personalize the message for each customer. Brooke says this is especially important on social media: “Brands can show empathy digitally by responding quickly, using human language (not canned replies), and empowering social care teams to resolve issues without endless escalations.”
This is also a great way to use your Customer Experience Mission Statement. Those words can guide how we communicate with customers. If your Mission is about helping customers feel valued, then encourage employees to communicate that in their own way. Regular reminders, role play, and recognition can help employees feel comfortable finding their own authentic way of communicating.
Any member of your team with a direct connection to customers — support and service agents, social media managers, cashiers and in-store workers, sales representatives — benefit from customer empathy training. Consider hosting a companywide training at least once each year, and reinforce those ideas during quarterly meetings or lunch-and-learn sessions.
Remember, too, that empathy is finite. Humans don’t have an unlimited supply! That’s why we need to recognize when support agents are getting one tough request after another and help them take breaks and focus on self-care. Representatives need our support to help them show up for every customer consistently. Partner with your HR team to understand how your organization can better support your customer support team members to help them thrive.
Think about the brands or companies you feel most connected to. Is there something they’ve done during your experience that proved they care? How have they demonstrated empathy?
Greg says that empathy can show up in many ways: “Empathy begins by considering the customer’s needs, perspectives, and context at the point of an interaction. In some cases, that may be providing a closer parking space for a mother-to-be. In others, recommendations of related products that are seen as good advice from the customer’s perspective.”
You may think of brands like these:
Empathy isn’t just a “soft skill” in customer experience. It’s a competitive advantage. Brands that listen deeply, respond with care, and design experiences around real human emotions build stronger relationships, increase customer retention, and stand out in a crowded market.
If you’re ready to infuse empathy into your customer experience strategy, download our free customer journey mapping workbook today.
Jeannie is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker, and sought-after business coach who is trailblazing the movement from “Reactive Customer Service” to “Proactive Customer and Employee Experience.” More than 500,000 people have learned from her CX courses on LinkedIn Learning, and her insights have been featured in Forbes, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and NPR.
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