The Transformative Power of Empathy in Customer Support

Empathy isn't just a buzzword within customer support—it's a vital tool that we can use as customer support specialists to connect with your customers.

On this episode of Happy to Help, Brian Johnson from the Buzzsprout Support team joins Priscilla to talk about the power that Empathy has when supporting customers. Brian's hospitality background at Chick-fil-A gives him some great insight into how personal connection can build brand loyalty.

During this episode, we discuss empathy's critical role in customer interactions and discuss why it's a soft skill that is not only hard to teach but also essential to seek out during the hiring process. We take some time to look at how empathy can help turn a frustrated customer into a happy one and we walk through some practical uses of empathy in our support communication.

Plus, we discuss a Support in Real Life story from a listener! 

We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!

Follow us on Instagram @happytohelppod

To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com

Transcript

Priscilla: 0:00

Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, priscilla, and today we're joined by a member of the Buzzsprout support team to discuss empathy and the vital role it plays in providing remarkable support to your customers. We're going to cover what empathy is, the impact it can have on your customers and some practical ways to use it in your support communication. So thanks for joining us. Let's get into it. All right. So before we kick the conversation off, I want to welcome Brian Johnson to the podcast. Hi, Brian.

Brian: 0:35

Hey, thanks for having me.

Priscilla: 0:37

So Brian also works at Buzzsprout and he is on the podcaster support team with me. Can you give us just a little background about your role at Buzzsprout and kind of what your history with customer support has been before Buzzsprout?

Brian: 0:49

Yeah, absolutely so. Like you said, I've been with Buzzsprout a little bit over a year and I'm on the support team, so we help all of our podcasters that write in. And before that, my entire career has been in the hospitality industry. So, starting when I was in college, I've pretty much had almost every position you can think of in the hospitality realm, from restaurants to hotels. Really I've covered it all, and most of my career has been with Chick-fil-A, so that's going to be a lot of my examples that I use today is from the good world of Chick-fil-A.

Priscilla: 1:17

Yeah, chick-fil-a is known for their customer support, so y'all don't know Brian, obviously, but I want to brag on him just a little bit. Brian is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. I know Jordan can agree with me on that one. Yes, he has just a natural way of relating to people both in person and via email, and so when I was picking someone to come on and talk about empathy with me today, I really thought oh, brian is the one for this conversation. As Brian mentioned, he's been with the Buzzsprout team since 2022, and he's been supporting our podcasters since then. Brian has an interesting background because he has done a lot of in-person support and now he's primarily doing email support, and so I'm excited to kind of have his insight for both of those different channels, as we talk about empathy and using empathy to enhance the customer experience. So let's jump into it. What do you say?

Brian: 2:11

Sounds good. It's going to be fun.

Priscilla: 2:13

All right. So I want to just do your basic breakdown of what empathy is, and we're going to talk about why it's important in support. But first I want to kind of get into what exactly empathy is. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, so it's a little bit more than sympathy. So a lot of people I feel like sympathy and empathy can sometimes get interchanged a little bit, but they're very different ways of feeling.

Priscilla: 2:40

So sympathy is much more like understanding that someone else is having a hard time or seeing it from your point of view. Oh, I can see how you're feeling that way. But empathy is one step beyond that. It's more like getting into their shoes and feeling how they're feeling and trying to take on their point of view and see things from their point of view. And so when we talk about empathy in support, it's much more of the idea that you are taking on the point of view of the person who's reaching out to you for help. It's not so much that you're acknowledging them, even though you are doing that, but you're also going a step beyond that and you're getting into their shoes. You're looking at things from the way they're seeing it and you're trying to feel their feelings.

Brian: 3:24

It is a feeling you have to feel what they're going through in order to best help them, because if you just look at a checklist, oh this, this and this happened, I understand. Here's the solution. That's not remarkable service.

Priscilla: 3:36

You're going to give them that connection that we're looking for when you feel what they're experiencing, and so I think you you stated it beautifully- so one of the things about empathy that is interesting, so it's considered a soft skill, you know, like the kind of skill that you kind of have within your being or you don't. It's not something that you can teach as easily. I do think you can teach it, but it is definitely something that's more in your being. And so when you're hiring people to work in that customer facing role whether it's a support role or a hospitality role it's so important to look for people that already have that natural empathy in their being when you're hiring someone, because you can teach people the technical things.

Priscilla: 4:18

For the most part at this point in our society, most people who are working or moving into the workforce, they have a pretty good grasp of technology and so you can learn that stuff pretty easily. But empathy is a lot harder to teach, and so that's why it's just so important to have that when you're hiring, to look for that soft skill when you're bringing people onto your support team, and I mean I would argue that it's the most important part of offering a remarkable service. You kind of said that you know you can go through the checklist of these are the things that I'm supposed to do and now have done them and that is satisfactory service. But as far as pushing beyond that and going to the exceptional level, that's where empathy and that personal connection are going to come in.

Brian: 5:02

I was trying to think back to my interview process with Buzzsprout. Do you remember questions that you specifically asked to try and figure out if someone does have that kind of built into them and if it's just natural for them to want to help people?

Priscilla: 5:15

Oh gosh, do I remember exact questions? No, probably not. I know that I ask a lot of questions about you. Know, how would your friends describe you and your personality? I think we talked a lot about like patients, and do you find that that's something that is very draining, for you to be seeing things from other people's point of views, to be patient with people, or is that something that's life giving? So I know we talk about that a lot, but I don't know specific questions. Do you know the specific questions you're thinking of?

Brian: 5:45

So you mentioned the one that I did remember, like as far as if it's draining or life giving, and of course, my answer was, oh, it's life giving to be able to help people as kind of naturally love it. So whatever you're doing is working, because our team is full of people that actually enjoy helping people.

Priscilla: 5:59

Yeah, and we'll have a whole episode, I'm sure, about hiring the right people and what skills to look for, but I definitely think empathy is up there on like that top tier. If that is not something that is natural to you, then it's going to be a lot harder for you to work in a support role and offer exceptional service every day. So let's move, then, into empathy and customer support a little bit more. At the end of the day, the people that are reaching out to support are people, right? And the people that you have on your support team are people, and so we, as human beings, I think there's like a deep down need to be known and understood and valued, and so that's going to come through in all of our interactions. And so if we keep that in mind and support that that's your basic need and want, and that's my basic need and want is to be known then that's going to help me to empathize and to have that connection, that personal connection, with my customers, my podcasters, your users, whatever it is, whoever you're working with.

Priscilla: 7:01

So Paul Greenberg, who is the author of the Commonwealth of Self-Interest Business Success Through Customer Engagement, has this quote that I really like If a customer likes you and continues to like you, they will continue to do business with you. And no, they won't. And it's as simple as that, right? If you like a brand, if you like the things they do, then you're gonna keep working with them, and if you don't, you're gonna stop, unless they're providing you some kind of something you can't get anywhere else. That's the only reason you're gonna go. Okay, I'm gonna keep working with this brand that I don't really like. And so what makes people like you? It's the personal connection. And how do you communicate that to your users?

Brian: 7:42

I love that quote, like there's so many options for any industry or service that if you're treating people terribly, there's no way they're gonna stay with you. There's way too many options out there.

Priscilla: 7:52

Yeah, and we say a lot within the podcast hosting realm. There's a lot of podcast hosts out there, and so the ways you differentiate yourself from other options is through that personal connection. At least for us, that's what we have focused on is we are an actual team that is here for you and we connect with you as people, because we are people and we're here to help you, and that sets us apart from some of our competitors, and for some people, that won't be the most important thing. They'll be like. Actually, I want the highest tech. That's what I want to be. The biggest thing or the cheapest option. I don't care so much about customer support, but in our conversation, what we're trying to do is have excellent support and make that remarkable experience, and so in order to do that, we have to focus on the personal connection.

Brian: 8:39

I think part of that comes almost immediately with our greeting. We're not trying to have like that five star uppity language like hello, good sir or madam. We're like hey, bob, thanks for writing in. Like we're trying to treat them like people and let them know that we're people too and immediately that's a personal connection and they can tell it's not some bot that has filled out a form and they just filled in the blanks of their name and their problem and then this is what you need to do Like we're people, helping people.

Priscilla: 9:05

Exactly, and I mean people do this all the time.

Priscilla: 9:08

But if you wrote into a support email and the person who writes back isn't a person, it's a bot, and they give you all the correct answers, well that's great, but I'm not gonna tell people about that.

Priscilla: 9:19

I'm not gonna say, listen, I wrote in to whoever Comcast and they sent me an email back and it had all the right answers. It was definitely a bot, but I mean they had the right answers. So you like, that's just not something to get people to talk about it, but what they will talk about and what we see in support all the time is that the people who leave reviews or they tell their friends about support or not necessarily about support, but about the product they are saying I had this great experience with the support team. I worked with Megan and she knew exactly what was going on and she came in and she helped me. Well, megan's the reason that they're talking about it at all, and so it's like that building loyalty. It's not the bot that's getting the answers right. Even though that might be a satisfactory answer, it's not gonna be something to tell friends about and to recommend a service based on.

Brian: 10:08

And that connection builds on itself. So let's say, in your example, megan helped someone. That person is gonna be so much more likely to write in but also be in a happier or friendly mood if something does go wrong, because they know they're gonna get good service and so it just increases the overall experience of, in our case, podcasting, because obviously not everything's gonna go perfectly but they know they have someone kind of on their side, they have that safety net of the Buzzsprout support team and it's not gonna ruin their day if something goes wrong because, hey, they get to talk to Megan now.

Priscilla: 10:41

Yeah, exactly, and because once they've built that personal connection with Megan, they're no longer dreading it. And we talked last week or a couple of weeks ago in our last episode about the reputation that support has or that customer service has and how it's like, oh my gosh, most people are so like they dread reaching out to a support team or it like brings their whole day down. But if you have this personal connection and you connect with people like people, then they start to, like you were saying, they start to realize that reaching out is not gonna be a painful experience and in fact, it can be a joyful experience. They can enjoy it and so in that sense, it makes them want to interact more and build brand loyalty and build a loyal customer or user or podcaster.

Brian: 11:23

Absolutely.

Priscilla: 11:24

Okay, can you talk a little bit, brian, about Chick-fil-A and how Chick-fil-A talked about kind of that personal interaction, because I know that Chick-fil-A is known for having remarkable service and they make that one of the pillars of their organization. So can you tell me a little bit about what that was like being in Chick-fil-A and being a leader and teaching other people how to do that in person?

Brian: 11:44

Yeah, obviously Chick-fil-A has a great reputation. I was joke with people. Working there for so many years was kind of like getting my masters in customer service and so I dealt with so many different situations and, like you mentioned, we hired hundreds of team members over the years, and a majority of those are teenagers. They're between 15 and 20 years old usually, and so I don't know if you've interacted with teenagers much, but it's not. Their most natural ability is to empathize with people that are having difficult situations, and so we obviously train them to look for opportunities to be empathetic and to serve our guests, and so one of the very first things we did in training was we showed them a video called Everybody has a Story, and it's a short little video. It's actually kind of sad. It makes me cry most often, but it really hits home, and so it kind of makes. Our point is that the video is showing like a busy Chick-fil-A restaurant and it'll just kind of zoom in on somebody and then like a little word bubble will pop up next to them and they look like they're just happy, having a great time, but it'll say like just found out that they have cancer. Or they'll show a gentleman sitting by himself drinking coffee and it was like would have been his 50th anniversary today. And there's happy ones too, but obviously the sad ones really hit home because someone's not necessarily walking around showing that they're that sad but, like the title of the video, everybody has a Story and so it makes you think that people have so much going on in their lives that how they're interacting with you may not be the complete story and you need to talk to them like a person and you need to find out more information so you can best serve them in the way that they're needing at that moment. Because let's say, for example, the gentleman with the coffee if I took a moment or two just to talk to him about his day, chances are he's probably gonna open up to me and mention that today would have been his 50th anniversary and what a bond I can make with him. That, like man, that must be really difficult, or? I appreciate you coming in today. We're glad you're here and just trying to brighten his day a little bit.

Brian: 13:48

But obviously there's so much going on in people's lives. When they ride into us, it could be that they're not necessarily frustrated with us or the podcast. They may have a million other things going on, but if you know that people are people and they just have more than one thing in their life, it helps you out so much to be able to be like okay, let me take a step back. He's not personally attacking me. I'm here to help. I have the knowledge to help. Hopefully I can brighten his day a little bit or I can do something that will allow him to move on and deal with other issues.

Brian: 14:19

So that little video is a really short thing, but it just. I think it really sinks in with a lot of those teenagers that maybe didn't really think about what to think about when other people are walking in, but it gives them more of a big picture view. And so then obviously it's the in moment coaching. We're constantly looking for moments to either have those teenagers go and help someone to really make their day or, if they can watch us do that for the guest, then it's just constant coaching, constantly showing like, hey, we don't just show this in a training video, and then we treat people differently, like we live what we say, and we wanna make sure that every person that comes into this restaurant feels like a guest in a home.

Priscilla: 14:58

Basically, yeah, and like I think what you just said there was very important. You know, you can talk about it in training and you can talk about okay, everyone has a story, remember that. But when you're actually in the moment, when you're actually handing people their chicken nuggets or you're being yelled at by someone across the way who didn't get the right sauces, it's hard to remember. Okay, this person has a story, this person has things that they're dealing with that I don't know about and I might never know about it, but how can I treat them in a way that's going to remind them that we're all on the same team and we're all working toward the same thing?

Priscilla: 15:29

You know, when you talk about, like, looking for people specifically who have these kind of traits one thing that I think maybe unique to kind of our world, which is tech, online software the people who are the ones who are gonna help you build that brand loyalty, those are your customer facing people, right, and so your customer support team.

Priscilla: 15:50

They are the people that are working with your customers and they're the ones that are gonna have the most impact when it comes to building that loyalty, and so that's why it's really important that those are the people that you're hiring with those skill sets that are gonna match what you want to be the face of your business, your organization, your product. Because you can hire someone who's behind the scenes, and I mean you want them to be a really good developer. Right, you've gotta have the best developers to create the best products, but the same time, you also have to hire the best kind of people for your support team to be the face of your business, because one person who goes off the rails or it has a hard time communicating empathy or personally connecting, that could be a really hard thing to come back from for a customer.

Priscilla: 16:34

And so it's just so important to hire those right kind of people.

Brian: 16:37

You mentioned the phrase remarkable service earlier. We actually use that phrase at Chick-fil-A as well. Yeah, it was basically service so good that people want to remark about it, and there's been so many stories that show if someone has a positive Experience, they'll tell one person about it. If they have a negative experience, they'll probably, on average, tell about nine people about it.

Priscilla: 16:57

I know that's true for me.

Brian: 17:00

So you're kind of behind the eight ball in the service industry because you you have to have nine great interactions to equal out one bad one. And, like you said, one bad one can really hurt a brand. And so we have so many podcasters that write in all the time we're, we have to strive to have great interactions with all of those podcasters that write in, otherwise they could write nine of their friends and then that's nine potential podcasters that we miss out on just because one bad interaction with one Podcaster right, and that's why it's so important that in the moment when you're working with customers, that you remember that they have a story and that Every communication that you have with that person is led by that focus and not letting you lose sight of that.

Priscilla: 17:43

Chick-fil-a obviously has sustained success at a high level. I mean, chick-fil-a does a really good job of that their drive-through lane. I know when I go to Chick-fil-A that I'm gonna be greeted by a nice, happy person who is gonna give me everything I need and be smiling and happy the whole way through it. And I mean, I do think that that leads me to choose Chick-fil-A over another chain where the person isn't even gonna make eye contact with me, you know, and so I think that that really has such a big impact, like we were saying. All right, so we know that empathy is important, we know that that personal connection is important.

Priscilla: 18:15

We also know it's not always so easy and I think it's probably the most important when you have someone who is angry or having a bad experience and they reach out to you. So I kind of want to get into that a little bit, like how to show empathy to people that are in those frustrating places and are being very obvious about the fact that they're frustrated or having a bad experience. Because it's easy to connect personally with someone who's happy, that's not hard, but when someone reaches out angry and upset, it can be a lot harder. So, brian or Jordan, do you guys have any experiences where you didn't feel valued and you didn't feel understood and you didn't feel like the person cared when you were coming from?

Jordan: 18:53

Yeah, I do have a story, actually something. I didn't even have to think about this because this was so frustrating to me. I had this tire on my car that just kept deflating. It was just always deflating. So annoying, yeah. And then my spare tire Also kept deflating, and so what would happen is I would like have a flat tire, put the spare on.

Jordan: 19:17

The spare would be also flat by morning, right, and I kept taking it to this one tire shop in town and Every time the guys would look at it and they'd say there's nothing wrong with your tires, we just put some air in them and we put them back on your car. I was like, great, that's gonna be like flat in two days. And, sure enough, I brought my car back, had to get it towed again like two days later and they told me the same thing there's like there's nothing wrong with your tires. I'm like, well, obviously there is. And this happened like three times. Three times I brought two flat tires into this tire shop within a week and I was just beside myself like nobody's listening to me, everyone's making me feel like I'm crazy, right, like I'm the one like deflating these tires every night, you know.

Priscilla: 20:03

And then paying a tow truck to take your car to the dealership.

Jordan: 20:06

Yeah, and guess what I did? I went to another tire shop and I bought a new set of tires and miraculously know them gone flat. But they could have had my business if they were just nice about it and just been like, oh, it sucks, like you have to replace a couple tires. But they were just so stuck in this like no, no, no, yeah kind of thing, and not listening to me and feeling my frustrations, that I just took my business elsewhere.

Priscilla: 20:30

Yeah, I think it's such a good example of like. In that situation, they may not have known the answer, right, there was a lot of variables, there were a lot of things that they couldn't figure out, and so, instead of going, we're gonna believe you that what you're telling us is true, and we're gonna value you as a person, and we're gonna Try to figure out how to fix this, even though we don't know exactly what's going on, because from our side, everything looks okay. That would make you feel better, even if there wasn't a good resolution, right, even if the resolution is let's just get you new tires, because this one is a magically deflating tire, but at least it values your understanding of the situation, even if that wouldn't have fully solved the problem in a way that they Wanted to solve it. Brian, did you have any stories?

Brian: 21:13

My story. I don't want to throw any brains into the bus. I'll just say I got a new fitness tracker for Christmas and it would not charge, so it was obviously defective, like something's wrong with it. So I wrote into the customer service team and this was email support. So I was like, alright, let's see what they got. And they just immediately send back like a canned response saying like, hey, thanks for writing and we'll reach back out to you within 24 hours. So I was like, okay, so then around 24 hours later, then someone wrote in and gave me some instructions on some troubleshooting and I tried that and I Respond and say, hey, that didn't work. And of course then the response I got back was like, hey, thanks for writing and we'll get back to you in 24 hours. And then 24 hours later goes by and I get the same instructions back again Like you could tell they had not read my email saying like, hey, this didn't work.

Brian: 22:03

Is there anything else I can do? They sent back the same exact email and I said, oh no, here was my response to your first time. You sent that to me. It didn't work, can I get something else? And of course the response was, hey, we'll reach back in 24 hours. I was like, oh my goodness.

Brian: 22:17

And so this went on and on for for a couple weeks. Like they just they sent me that same first directions three times and in between, each of one of those was the canned response, and so I felt just like a number on their sheet. You could tell nobody had read it. I was just picturing their customer service people going home at night being like man I helped a thousand people today and it's like, well, you probably didn't help anybody because, like, all you did was send the canned response. And so I just felt so unimportant and frustrated and it was just such a terrible experience. And Finally I just went back to the store and got a replace, no problem. I wish I would have done that right away, but it was funny because after I got the replacement, about four days later, someone responded and be like it looks like this isn't working for you. I'd like to replace this. I was like I'm good, thanks, oh.

Priscilla: 23:04

Yeah, and you know it's funny because that's so much back and forth and there's someone that's sending those emails Whether it's a bot or not, I guess, but there's someone that's sending them and think about how much time could have been saved on their end if they had taken that first response and made it personal and Looked into the situation a little bit more closely. It's really. I think it is hard. As someone who runs a team of support specialists, it can be hard to like put the emphasis on slowing down and making something personal when there's a busy inbox of Emails waiting for people, right, or phone calls. If you're working in a call center and you've got all these phone calls coming in, then so much. It's a turnover situation. I want to get this out and get it moved on and then if it comes back, it comes back. But I think sometimes that needs to shift so that what you're really focusing on is how can I solve this specific person's question succinctly and efficiently right now Without pushing it on to another 24 hours? Another 24 hours, because that just piles up your work Over time and then it doesn't make it. The service is not remarkable, right, because then you're waiting for multiple weeks to get a simple answer that you ended up fixing yourself. But I think that both of these are good examples of like you were saying, brian, making sure that when you're working in support, you are looking at people, or you're looking at the tickets coming in or the phone calls coming in, like the people that they are and not just a number.

Priscilla: 24:32

And so when someone comes in who's angry and frustrated, how are we gonna respond to them in a way that's gonna remind them that they're valuable, that we understand them and that we care About them as people? One of the things that we try to convey on the Buzz sprout support team is that we are on your team. I, as a support specialist, I'm on the same team as the podcaster who's using my service. Just like if you go through the Chick-fil-A line, the person who's gonna give me my chicken Is on the same team as me. We want the same goal. The goal is chicken into my hands. That's the. That's the goal, right. So for podcasting, the goal is for you to successfully run your podcast using our software. We both want that goal, and so if you keep that in mind, as you're working with someone, I think it it helps us to empathize with them when they're frustrated, and if you can convince them that they have you on their team and that you're working with them, that it feels a little less like You're going to head to head with them with who's right and who's wrong. It's more of how can we do this together, and so I think the personal connection in that is where that all comes through.

Priscilla: 25:42

So I was reading this kind of ties in with this. I was reading a study on empathy in our brains and it got very scientific and I'm not going to get into all of that and they were kind of talking about it in the realm of healthcare and having to show empathy, like at the bedside, you know, in a hospital or something. But one of the things that they talked about was how we as people, it's easier for us to show empathy for people that we actually value. So if you've built a personal connection with the person who is in your hospital for treatment, then it's going to be easier to empathize with them. And so if we as support people who are working through email, remember that the person writing in is a person who has a story and has history and their own baggage and their own knowledge and their own things that they're dealing with on a daily basis, then it makes it a little easier for us to empathize with them.

Priscilla: 26:36

If we're actually valuing the people who reach out to us, not just making them feel like they're heard, but actually hearing them or, you know, actually valuing them instead of just making them feel valued. It's like a slight difference, but I feel like sometimes I will think about it and I want to make sure you feel like you're heard. No, no, no, no. I actually want to hear you, I actually want to value you, and then when you do that, then the empathy is going to come so much easier because now I care about you, I actually care about your podcast and I want your podcast to do well, because I care about you as a person and I value you as a person, and so, yeah, I'm going to help you set up your custom URL, even though you're getting really frustrated.

Brian: 27:13

I think that's huge because that genuine care will come across and mean so much more than if you've just been kind of coached up on some good things to say to someone to make them feel like you care, like the genuine care will come across.

Priscilla: 27:27

Yeah, I think so, and we talked about it a little bit. But you know, the more you have that kind of interaction with people that write into you, the more that's going to change their perception of the kind of support they're going to get when they reach out. And so slowly it's going to change from being a oh gosh, now I have to reach out to support and I'm going to get the run around for two weeks to now. I know Brian is on that team and I know Brian has shown me in the past that he cares about me, and so I am confident that when I write in, brian's going to continue to care about me and he's going to help me get this thing solved. I think that's what makes a regular, satisfactory support interaction an excellent one and something to remark about.

Brian: 28:07

One little trick I use to try and create that connection just right away in my head is I try and picture either my mom or my dad or my grandma or someone like that on the other end of this email and like what would I respond to them? Because obviously I have that connection with them, and so I try and just think of it that way, like is this a family member or a friend? Like what would I say then? Because then if I'm treating a brand new emailer as my grandma, then the love's going to come through.

Priscilla: 28:32

Exactly right. It's going to be so much easier to empathize with them. Okay, so, speaking of, we're talking about email support, but you know, you've had the experience of in-person support, so I kind of want to talk about the two differences there, or even phone support too. It's a completely different channel of communication and so your ways of empathizing with people is actually going to be very different depending on what channel you're using. So, for example, you know, if you're doing in-person support at Chick-fil-A, well then you're talking to someone. They can see your facial expressions, they can hear your inflection, so they know pretty quickly whether you're occluded and you're caring about them, or whether you're not, and you don't have to be as specific about the words you're saying. Would you agree with that?

Brian: 29:17

100%. I think the body language and then being able to hear your voice tone or even just being able to make eye contact with somebody can really help make that connection. And they feel like you said, they feel like you're on the same team, whereas on the phone you get a little bit less of that, but at least they can still hear your voice tone and make that connection Email. You got to work hard to show that empathy and create that connection. And so one of my favorite quotes that I learned when I was in college but it's just stuck to me because it just blew my mind as like a 21-year-old that had never really done anything but it's the Maya Angelou quote that says people will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Brian: 30:00

And so I tried to teach all my team members that when I was training, because you can technically listen to somebody but have a stone cold face and then give them a free sandwich or something afterwards and technically maybe they're happy, but they're not going to come away from that interaction feeling great, whereas if I'm making eye contact, I'm truly listening to what the issue was and then I solve the issue and maybe even go above and beyond what you were expecting. You're going to come away from that interaction feeling amazing and a week later you may not remember my name or even what I did for you, but you're going to drive by in this case Chick-fil-A and be like I really like them. They treat people well. It goes a long way to make someone feel like the issue was resolved in a great way.

Priscilla: 30:48

Yeah, and I think with email you touched on it a little bit. I think with email it's a lot harder to convey empathy through email, because you're losing the inflection of someone's voice, you're losing their facial expressions, their body language. All you can do is communicate through written word, and so, if you're listening to this and you primarily support people through email, it can be harder to convey to someone that you're on their team, that you care about them, that you value them. It can be harder to do that because all you can do is email. All you can do is the written word. It's not impossible. It just takes a little bit more intentionality and it takes a little bit more effort, sometimes as the person responding via email. And so one of the things I wanted to talk about was just some of our practical applications for showing empathy through written support, and this will also translate over into in-person support and on the phone, but I'm going to talk about it within the realm of written support, because I think it can be a really difficult task to communicate empathy through written communication, and so we have a couple of things that we talk about on the support team and a couple strategies that we use to help with that. So I kind of want to talk through some of those and hopefully that'll give people some practical applications of this and using this in their work. So the first one that we have is that we lead with empathy.

Priscilla: 32:14

When you're in written communication, when you write something down, you can put all your own tone on it with how you're writing it.

Priscilla: 32:21

You're like I'm writing this with a positive inflection, but when someone else reads that, they will put their own inflection on it, and so that is how it is so easy to miscommunicate via written word.

Priscilla: 32:32

We have a lot of like frustration through social media these days and I think a lot of that has to do with misunderstanding tone in written communication.

Priscilla: 32:42

And so if we as the support people decide that we're going to set the tone right up at the top with empathy, we're going to start up at the top so that the whole way you're reading through it, we're hoping our goal is for you to read that tone throughout the email. You could have a very empathetic response and then put that empathy kind of toward the bottom. But by the time they get to that at the bottom, they're already going to have decided what tone they're reading it in, and so for us we try to say lead with empathy. If someone's frustrated and they write into the support team, that our response is going to be I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. Let me, like, help me understand what it is that you're running into so that I can support you better, or whatever it is, to show them that you're on their team, that you care about them, and then get into the nitty gritty of how to solve the problem.

Brian: 33:29

And in the written format, because there is so much room for mistaking of tone or meaning or anything like that. You kind of have to be just very upfront and be like I'm really sorry this is happening to you. We're on the same team, let's do this together, where you probably wouldn't say that necessarily like straight up face to face to someone. But you need to kind of, like you said, set that tone and then, when you're on the same team, you can use the phrase weed throughout your email, because you and the podcast are going to figure this out together and you kind of have to be just kind of like very clear and upfront in the written form, which would not be maybe the most normal thing face to face, but it works.

Priscilla: 34:07

Yeah, like, imagine you're in the drive through at Chick-fil-A and you said you get all frustrated because they didn't give you your Polynesian sauce, and they go, we're going to handle this, we're going to get this solved, you and me I'm on your team Let me go get you some Polynesian sauce. It would feel a little bit overdone maybe, but in email you have to overdo it a little bit because there's so much room for error. So I think that's a good example. Another thing we talk about is putting yourself in their reality. So putting yourself in the reality of the person that's written in and that really is the empathy side of it right, because you're seeing things from their point of view.

Priscilla: 34:42

So much of support is someone writing in because they have a question and you're the expert and you're telling them the answer.

Priscilla: 34:50

And so I always tell people this when I'm kind of training them on our tone we know a lot more than the person writing in to support you, as the support specialist for your organization know a lot more about the product that you're supporting than the customer that's writing in about it.

Priscilla: 35:07

But what you have to remember is that their reality is what they know, and so you know, in our case, someone might write in and be frustrated because they think they've lost an episode, they've deleted an episode. We know that the episode's not deleted, it's actually just moved to a different part of the page, and so we can write back and say, hey, guess what? It's actually fine, but their frustration is still there because they think they've lost it. And so there's an aspect of us putting ourselves in their reality and saying, hey, I know you're frustrated and I feel it too, and I'm on your team. Let me actually tell you how what you're stressed out about, worried about whatever it is, is actually not as you're seeing it, and so it's kind of like recognizing that their reality is different than ours, and so the education side of things comes into play. But you don't want to get to the education before you recognize that they're actually dealing with what's a very scary situation for them.

Brian: 35:59

I think a big part about being in their reality and understanding their reality is the communication, where you can be like OK, just to review, have you done this, this and this to get to this point? Because you never want to assume, because, like you said, we know more than they do, but they might have missed a step. That's obviously going to cause an issue and, no matter what we do moving forward, if they didn't do this step then they're not going to be successful. Sometimes it's good to help them take a step back and be like OK, did we do this and this? Ok, great, let's go from there. And like that way you're both on the same page and you can move forward together and not assume that they did everything correctly up until this point. You need to, like you said, understand what they've gone through.

Priscilla: 36:38

Right, and you want to hold their stress or their worry with the weight that they're holding it with, because it might not feel so important to us, but to them it is very important, and the only reason that it's not as important to us is because we have more information than they do, and so in order to help them, we have to communicate to that. But we also have to hold it with the weight that they're holding it with, so that they know that we value them and we care about them and we care about their work. Another thing that we try to do is we try to I was trying to like bring this down into like a quick quippy, like thing to remember and I said make things personal, but kind of the idea of like bring it back down, kind of like what you were saying about taking it back down to like the bottom level and saying, okay, we're here together, let's work on this. Let's do this one thing at a time, because sometimes I think you can get so at least for me when I'm working in support, especially on like a really difficult case you can kind of get so out above it that you almost feel like this is so much bigger and then you're frustrated, and they're starting to get frustrated, and you can't get to the solution, and so sometimes it almost helps to just physically go okay, we're bringing this right back down.

Priscilla: 37:51

What are the things we know, what are the facts we know? And how can I get this personal? I'm trying to get you to understand that I'm on your team and every email I send you're frustrated with me. So how can I bring this down to a personal level so that I can convince you that I actually am on your side, because I can't talk to you on the phone. And so how do I change that stereotype?

Priscilla: 38:10

Because, you know, some people write into support and they're so ready to fight. They don't have good experiences in the past, and so how can I convince you? And so for me sometimes, like physically, I have to go okay, I'm bringing this back down to this base level and I'm going to talk to Angela as a person, because Angela is a person with a story and a history, and I'm going to make it really personal and say, hey, angela, I'm here to help you. I want to remind you that I'm on your team, and hopefully then Angela gets that and says, okay, let me try again. Maybe I don't need to be as frustrated as I am. No offense to any Angela's out there. That's just the first name that came to my head.

Brian: 38:49

But when you bring them back down, it also helps too, because I feel like they'll be able to communicate better. And it's just better for both sides of the conversation, because if they're just so frustrated, maybe they're not even reading your email because they just are just so worked up because something's not working. And maybe you ask the same question again in a different way and they kind of catch their eye and they're like okay, okay, we're making progress, this is going to be okay.

Priscilla: 39:12

Yeah, I think we've all been there where we get so frustrated that no longer are we following the path that's happening. But now you're just expecting a response and that's the response you're responding to, even though that's not actually the response that's coming through. And then the last thing we try to remind people to do in Bus Brout Support is to practice self-empathy. I don't think I've ever said it like that, but as I was writing my thoughts down, that's kind of how I phrased it. But it's like when you're on an airplane and they say, put your mask on before you help the person next to you.

Priscilla: 39:45

If you are not giving yourself the ability to take a break and go out and see the sun or like, get out of the you know whole of emails that you're in or the phone calls that you're taking, if you don't take time to take breaks and kind of replenish that, then you are going to run out of empathy and then it's going to be a lot harder to give someone an excellent experience with your product because your empathy is gone. And so you know what we do is we'll do, you know, small shifts, kind of as the support team, so you have like a couple hours in the inbox but then you have a couple hours outside of the inbox to work on other things, to kind of use a different muscle in your brain. But it really comes down to that, like it's almost like self-care type of a thing. I have to make sure that I'm taking care of my own empathy reserve so that I can give it to people and help make their experience excellent.

Brian: 40:38

And don't be afraid to review a situation or an email and learn from it. Like have that empathy and understanding that you're not going to always have the perfect answer for that person, but when you look back and learn from it, you'll have a better answer for the next person that has that issue, and just know that again, it keeps going back to this. We're humans and we're not perfect, so we're just trying to help as best we can.

Priscilla: 41:00

Yeah, everyone else has a story. I also have a story, and my story today is that I didn't get enough sleep and I'm tired and my coffee didn't taste like I wanted it to taste like, and now I'm frustrated. So sometimes you do have to step back and go. Okay, how do I solve the part of me that I want to change so that I can provide better support? So maybe it means taking 15 minutes and getting that cup of coffee so that it's what you wanted, so you can come back energized and ready to go, because if you're already working out of a frustrated headspace, it's going to be so much harder to level with and make someone else feel understood and valued.

Priscilla: 41:38

I think empathy is just a skill that is undervalued and support teams in general. I know a lot of times we focus on making sure you're the smartest one or you have all the right answers and we've kind of been saying this the whole time. But you can have someone that gives you the right answers the whole time, but if there's no personal connection there, if there's no empathy, then that's gonna be a satisfactory answer, but it's not necessarily gonna be a remarkable or an excellent answer. And since that's what we're going towards. That's. Our goal is to have excellent customer experiences. That's where that personal connection and that empathy is really vital in any customer support team or any customer support specialist.

Priscilla: 42:21

Let's talk about some real life support stories and questions. This is our segment of the show where we're gonna look into our email and find stories from listeners or questions from listeners that we can talk through and how we would handle those support questions or those situations, because I think when you're in it and when you're working through emails, it can be hard to go back and, like in the moment, analyze how you're doing, and so this is a great time for us to step back we're out of the busyness of an inbox and look at a question and how we would handle that and how the best way to handle that would be. So, jordyn, do you have a story or a question from a listener for us?

Jordan: 43:03

I do actually have one, yay, so this submission says hello, I'm a freelance graphic designer, so I often am my own customer support. I recently had an interaction with a client that I have never run into before and I didn't really know what to do about it. In 2019, he paid a deposit to have some graphics done for his website and we were working on business card designs. He completely ghosted me. After I sent a final design proposal, I moved on to other work and eventually forgot about him. That is until December 2023, when I received an email from him asking if I was still working on his business cards or if he could please finally have the design. I'm really upset that he's made it sound like I was working on business cards for almost four years and I don't even know how to respond to him.

Priscilla: 43:50

Yeah, that's an interesting, that's definitely a unique question and a unique situation. Yeah, four years, that's a long time, okay. So the first thing that comes to mind we've been talking through this episode about how everyone has a story and the first thing that comes to mind for me is assuming positive intent. So it's easy when you hear that story to think, okay, this person was working with you and they ghosted you, and now they've decided that they want business cards, like the audacity to come back and now want them. It's kind of like our natural response, at least mine. I don't know what that says about me as a person. That's, my natural response is like wow, the audacity. But what if the person, if we're gonna assume positive intent what if they didn't see your email and they happen to have some personal things going on that caused their focus to shift away from their business cards and I mean, this happened in 2019, maybe they had a really hard time through the pandemic and their mind shifted to something other than their business cards. And then they get to the end of 2023 and they go man, I really wish I had some new business cards. And they go wait a minute, didn't I pay someone to make me new business cards Did I ever get those? And then they go and look for it and they realize that they didn't have them. That's very possibly not what happened. But if you assume that positive intent, then it gives you a much better starting point to go through and try to respond to them in a way that's going to be level and understanding and give them the grace that maybe they do or don't deserve. But at least in that situation we're starting at like a level place going okay, I forgot about it over the last three years. Maybe they also forgot about it over the last three years.

Priscilla: 45:39

I would say it kind of comes down to do you wanna have a continued relationship with this client or not, and your steps forward are kind of gonna depend on that. I think in either situation, if you start by assuming positive intent, you can reach out to them and either say kindly, you know I sent these files to you back in 2019, since I haven't heard from you in three years, unfortunately I can't do any further work on this. You know something like that If you want the client relationship to kind of fizzle because now you've decided that you don't wanna work with someone who's gonna ghost you, which is totally valid as the person who's doing the work. If you decide not to work for someone, that's your choice. But if you wanna keep the client relationship, then I think that it's important to you know, reach out, clarify that you did send it, even if it wasn't received, because you can recognize that someone can miss an email. That happens all the time.

Priscilla: 46:32

It could have gone to spam, they might have accidentally deleted it without knowing. I definitely have done that before and so recognizing that that could happen, saying you've already sent it, but then also laying those like ground rules for going forward with this relationship, because now you've had a situation where you feel like you've been ghosted and so I think it's important to kind of lay that groundwork of okay, I'm happy to keep working with you to send these files again. But before we get into it, I wanna make sure we're on the same page of what I'm expecting from you, what you're expecting from me, and you know, depending on how much was paid in the deposit, how much wasn't paid, what you're expecting to be paid before or after delivery of the final design. I think all of that is totally valid, as long as you're keeping in mind that this person could have been totally innocent in the fact that they didn't get the files and forgot about it.

Brian: 47:23

They could have easily just lost the email and I guess they just don't know how to search past emails. I guess Right.

Priscilla: 47:29

Well, I know that when I'm on my iPhone, it's so easy to like accidentally delete an email, so that's definitely within the realm of possibility, and so it's so easy to be like that's not likely and maybe it isn't likely, right, but you're gonna assume positive intent because that, ultimately, is gonna make it easier for you to work with them and it's gonna make it easier for you to work with any other clients if you're assuming the positive intent of the person who's writing in or reaching out, in this case, Another theory that we should have empathy for is, when Thanos collected all those infinity stones and snapped half, the universe disappeared for years, so he could have been part of the blip.

Priscilla: 48:10

Oh, now see, I think you're talking about Marvel.

Brian: 48:14

Oh.

Priscilla: 48:16

But I am not in the Marvel universe as much as the next person.

Brian: 48:21

My mistake.

Jordan: 48:22

I think I'm gonna start using that when I assume positive intent. I'm just gonna be like you know what, maybe they were part of the blip.

Priscilla: 48:28

Is the blip like a specific thing?

Brian: 48:30

Like a specific time. Half the universe disappeared for a couple years.

Priscilla: 48:33

Oh my goodness, yep, and this is historical nonfiction.

Brian: 48:37

Yeah, I think Endgame was a documentary.

Priscilla: 48:39

Oh, wow, I didn't realize that it got a big theatrical release. Good for it, okay, well, if you have questions or stories that you wanna send in to us, you can email us at happytohelp at buzzsprout. com, and we may discuss your story or question on a future episode of the podcast. Thanks again for coming, brian. It was nice to have you in the studio and to talk about support outside of our everyday working together.

Brian: 49:06

Thanks for having me, this was fun.

Priscilla: 49:07

And everyone else. Thanks for listening. Now go and make someone's day.