Empathy and Customer Support: Finding the Right Balance

Empathy is a powerful way to build trust, but leaning in too far can also backfire. Something I’ve come to wonder after 3.5 years at Buffer as a Customer Advocate is how can we use empathy effectively to enhance the customer support experience?

“The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner” —Merriam-webster.com

When sitting down to write this article, I struggled with how to start talking about empathy. I originally wanted to start along the lines of “Empathy is a powerful tool”, but felt like this gave the impression that we should fake empathy to get what we want; wielding it as a tool to be used when needed.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is that empathy is an incredibly powerful part of the customer service toolkit. It can help us get closer to the customer’s experience and more fully understand what they need from us. This will help them leave this interaction feeling cared for and help us, as support professionals, feel rewarded.

The power of empathy

“I was literally moved with how much patience and kindness I was treated. And that has been consistently done, whenever I've had a query or problem. I so appreciate that. Especially as I'm really out of my depth with digital technology which makes me feel rather vulnerable and are the mercy of those who know better, it is especially appreciated. Your service never lacks humanity and compassion and in an age where so much is regulated by computer programs, this stands out in a brightly shining light.” —Customer feedback (February 2022)

Empathy has incredible power in the customer support experience. It has the power to make the customer feel heard, diffuse a customer’s anger, and de-escalate a tense situation. When a customer writes in with a grievance and we respond with genuine empathy, it can communicate several things to the customer:

Validation that they are encountering a true problem;
Our understanding that the problem is important to them;
Acknowledgment that their problem is now important to us; and
News that we want to resolve the problem with them.

As a customer support professional, if we feel empathy for the customer who is writing in, we will want to work harder to help them. It may even inspire us to think of creative workarounds for issues that are beyond our control. If we can successfully resolve the issue for the customer, there is also the added bonus of job satisfaction. Our brain rewards us for helping others.