Empathy Insight research services

Broadly, there are two categories of my Customer Empathy research services:

1) Empathy Insights   - comprehensive empathy measurements, insights, diagnostics and reporting
                                        across a wide range of criteria

2) Empathy Monitors -  Low Cost measurement of Empathy Index elements only, to facilitate regular
                                        and widespread tracking of empathy improvements (click here to jump below)

Plus - learning to measure your OWN Empathy! (click here to jump below)

1) Empathy Insights

Customer Empathy means getting straight to the heart of the matter: achieving Customer Loyalty quickly, simply and... VERY economically, by focusing primarily on the human side in the Customer Experience: the feelings and emotions you are invoking in your customers.

So, first, you will discover how 'Good' you are currently making your Customers feel with a small Empathy Insight audit. Simply by analysing real customer interactions I will be able to give your business an objective rating (1-10 scale) for how you are making your customers feel and also point out specific areas of strengths and weaknesses.

With this feedback, you can help your people appreciate what you really want from them, and then either complement, part-replace or even completely replace your EXISTING Customer Service programs and investments in research, measurement and training.

What is a customer Empathy Insight survey?

A customer Empathy Insight is a small audit/survey of what your customers actually feel when they do business with you. (It's actually a simple, but just as effective derivative, of the original Customer Empathy Audits I devised from 1992 onwards)

The idea is to quickly, but accurately, benchmark the 'empathy' in your customers' experience and feed that back to you as a graphic description and experience that everyone can relate to, with:

• objective data about feelings - both overall and specific indicators  
• subjective feedback of impressions  
• backed up by audio 'sound bites' from actual customer interactions  
  (which usually validate the findings in no uncertain terms!)  

This can then be used to encourage your organisation to make customers feel good or even extremely good - ideally to have: Customers that love your company!

Why start with an Empathy Insight?

An Empathy Insight is usually the perfect way to start off any kind of further work with you on your business. This is because it actually helps you get to know the specific culture of your company  ("the way we do thing around here") and how that is putting a powerful stamp on the Customer Experience. Every business has its own unique culture (or 'personality') and, interestingly, it shines clearly through the customer interface and it's pretty easy to identify (when you know what you are looking for!)

So an Empathy Insight can also be a powerful illustration of your current company culture. This is important because, understandably, if you want to improve the customer experience, you'll have to look to the experience you are giving your staff too.  In other words, you can't ask staff to deliver something they are not already getting from you...

How does it work?

Remarkably, we don't need to survey customers themselves. We will simply gain access to actual customer interactions (most easily through recordings of phone calls that you send me, or sometimes by calling in myself as a customer).

Using my 17 years of experience and sensitivity in objectively interpreting emotional and feeling responses I (and sometimes certified Empathy Associates) will audit, analyse, assess and accurately report back to you your objective Empathy scores across a wide range of criteria, plus your overall Empathy Index (rating) on a 1 - 10 scale (i.e. how good it feels to be a customer). I can even elicit the specific cultural drivers that appear to be shaping and limiting your Customer Experience, and use sound bite snippets from the phone call recordings to powerfully illustrate and validate findings.

I can deliver all this, usually, in just a few of weeks, and within a budget that's irresistible:

...be at Ease, I have Fees that Please!

There's no need to spend tens of thousand of pounds on Customer Experience/Empathy Research and Audits; a budget between £2,500 and £10,000 can be enough to give you ALL that you need to get going (possibly for even LESS if you are a small businesses: no matter how small your budget is, I can give you valuable feedback)

Empathy Insight Benefits:

Three typical Insight Packages:

Options and packages outlined below can, of course, be adapted to your needs and budget.

They are very reasonably priced because my overheads are so low (I work from my home-office in Cornwall) and pass these savings on to you, plus my extensive experience of this means I can rapidly assess your Customer Empathy accurately and insightfully.

So, be assured that the quality will not be compromised. As the originator of the Customer Empathy and Empathy Scoring concepts in 1992 and developer of the 'Customer Empathy Audit' I probably have more experience, expertise and sensitivity in this still new and developing field than anyone else. I have 'audited' 1,000s of customer calls (and many face-to-face interactions) and conducted and led 100s of Empathy Audits.

I have worked with (at typically Board level) major Blue Chip companies, usually catalysing change in their entire approach to Customer Service to bring in the 'human element' (see my Clients page).

Example Empathy Insight offerings:

a) The entry level Basic Empathy Insight: a unique survey that will deliver you:

• an assessment of your current Empathy Index between 1 and 10 
• based on an assessment of up to 37 (depending on relevance) individual Empathy Indicators such as: 
• • "How Welcoming are you", 
  • "How much do you Value my custom", 
  • "How much do you Care about me, as a person?"
    
• drawn from a highly detailed analysis of 25 pre-recorded customer interaction calls supplied by you 
• Delivered as a written report 
• Good for a 'toe in the water' for how it feels to be a customer, or to cost-effectively commission one report for different departments to compare Customer Empathy Scores across your business 
• Sets a simple Baseline measure (benchmark) for future improvements 
• • of both the overall Empathy Index and all the individual Empathy Indicators 
    

b) Standard Empathy Insight: a survey that extends the Basic Empathy Insight with:

• A simple PowerPoint presentation of the key data from the findings 
• Some data analysis and observation 
• Several clips of sound ("sound bites") from the call recordings to illustrate the key data 
• Some generalised observations about your Company's Customer Empathy 
• Good for kicking off discussions amongst yourselves and opening up the whole issue of Customer Empathy in your business 

3) Cultural Empathy Insight: a survey that extends the Standard Empathy Insight with:

• Up to 40 call recordings analysed 
• A full 'Cultural Analysis' of your company: how you generally come across and the values that drive your business: 
• • Every company has its own unique 'cultural fingerprint', a way of acting and being 
  • It is a distinctive 'personality' that seems to come across in all your interactions 
  • Once you have identified and experienced your own cultural characteristics, you have established the basis for the deep change that's required for the most significant improvements in how you make your customers feel, your Customer Empathy. 
• Strengths and weaknesses within the Customer Experience 
• Full multi-media presentation 
• Including carefully selected clips of sound ("sound bites") from the call recordings to give a real feel for and an actual experience of: 
• • Your Culture 
  • Strengths and Weaknesses
    
• Overall conclusions and recommendations for improvements 
• Can include a half-day on-site presentation and facilitation (depending on location) 
  

2) (Low Cost) Empathy Monitors

Until recently, one reason it has always been difficult to manage Empathy has been the cost of the specialised services required to regularly measure and monitor Empathy related indexes in small areas or teams.

Now, with Empathy Monitor mini-surveys you can easily measure a wide variety of departments or locations regularly without breaking your research budget!

With fees starting from an extremely low point, an Empathy Monitor will give you all you need to simply monitor progress, without typically:

• Empathy Index tracking 
• Key Section ratings that make up the Index 
• plus, a few tailored questions to match your internal targets 
• Monthly, Bi-monthly or Quarterly snapshots of progress 
• Rapid turnaround of results 
• Very cost effective tool for tracking progress 
• On-going external quality assurance of internal measures is advised!

Typically, these small Empathy Monitors are set up AFTER an initial diagnostic Empathy Insight has been commissioned and delivered.

 

 

And ALSO:

3) Empathy Insights - Skills Transfer
   (teach a person to fish... etc!)

Generally, it's quite hard to measure one's own Customer Empathy: being so close to the experience, there is too much to distract and divert one's feelings!

However, with care, there are several ways to transfer the Empathy research skills into your own organisation so that even more regular monitoring can be established.

From simply being able to assess and score a colleague's or team member's Customer Empathy, through to establishing an Internal Team to conduct your own full Cultural Empathy Insight, you can now bring Empathy Insight skills inside your own business.

• These services are extremely valuable and are not available anywhere else 
• They also bring great credibility, as the results (often 'shocking' revelations for the cultural insights) are not just coming from an outside agency but also from credible people WITHIN the company.
  

Again, these are all examples, let's chat about your specific needs...