What is Empathy?

What is Empathy exactly and why is it important to our positions as agents in an answering service or call center?  Simply put, empathy is the ability to share in another’s emotions, thoughts, or feelings. In many situations it would be synonymous with the word sympathy, in either case for us, showing empathy or sympathy is aligning your words and actions to those of our caller.

It means gentling your voice and showing by your tone that you are sad for them when they call about a death in the family.  It means sounding concerned when someone calls the doctor because their child is running a fever.  It means sharing urgency when the call is about water flooding in from a leak in the apartment above.  And it also means sounding happy when someone calls to say that they won’t be in to work because their wife just had a baby.

If we had to describe empathy in only one word, it would be CARING.

In this business we try to hire people who care about people right from the start.  We often say we can teach a person about our clients’ businesses or how to use our equipment to take calls.  We can’t teach NICE – either you are, or you aren’t.

However, many people are not just naturally demonstrative – we have very successful agents who are more reserved.  They have learned how to put empathy into their voices.  To them it sounds a little forced, a little dramatic, but to the caller – who doesn’t know the agent – it just sounds like they care.

It may take a little practice to put more empathy into your voice – it may take talking into a tape recorder (we all hate that, but it is a great way to hear what others hear).  Ask your friends, your coworkers, your supervisor, if your voice sounds a little flat, if you sound hurried or disinterested.  If it is, work on it.  How engaged, how interested you sound to the caller will make the difference between a fair call experience and a great one.  It will also make a difference when it’s time for reviews and pay raises.  Employees who sound empathetic all the time are the people who give our business a great reputation and are naturally more valuable to our business.

If you are empathetic on calls, the caller you are conversing with will have a great impression of the client you are representing, and that is our job.  If you are being monitored, you will have a better score because you are providing that “Wow!” experience that we are all judged upon.  If you are interested in the caller, if you care about why they are calling, your empathy will show, and you will be providing the excellent service that we all want to be known for.

  

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