Articles about empathy

Top tips for dealing with redundancy survivors

When making redundancies, employers try to do so with the minimum cost and disruption to their operations. They often ignore the fact that the people left behind are, arguably, more important than those leaving. Simon Rustom provides some advice on how to avoid ‘Survivor Syndrome’.

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Communicate with charisma…how to flick the charisma switch

‘Charisma’ is defined in the Oxford dictionary as ‘compelling attractiveness or charm’ and famous charismatic communicators include President Obama, George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey and Churchill. If Churchill is in the list then we know charisma isn’t just about good looks, there is a depth of something more underneath. Carolyn Blunt explores…

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Time for a call centre exchange?

Remember being sent off to another country for a language exchange? Here is the example of another company that is doing this with two of its call centres.
Could we all benefit from a period of time in another call centre? Jonty Pearce investigates.

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Top tips for building rapport on the telephone

Rapport building is an integral part of the communication process. Lack, or absence, of rapport can fundamentally affect the outcome of any conversation. Christine Knott shares her top tips with us…

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Handling difficult customers

An angry customer calls your organisation with a complaint and starts shouting. So what do you do?
Christine Knott looks at how a simple technique called Transactional Analysis (TA) can help.

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Does body language really matter when talking on the telephone?

For many people the response to this would be ‘no’ – as how can body language be important if the caller can’t see the person they are talking to?

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Developing empathy in the call centre

Here Caroline Hardwicke shares her thoughts with us around the importance of developing empathy in the call centre.

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Handling customer complaints – why you need to say sorry

In this day and age, where processes are automated up to the gills and there is precious little human involvement between consumers and companies, when something goes wrong, it requires even more effort to retain that customer for longer. Why is it then, that so many companies I speak to discourage the words “I’m sorry”. [...]

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How do I – manage negativity to change?

Managing change is no mean feat. By nature, human beings do not like change. This is mainly because change can bring ambiguity, need for effort, disruption and confusion.
Here Gwenllian Williams shares her views with us.

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How do I – manage people who are my friends?

In all call centres the cream of the team rises to the top and is made a team leader or even a manager. However, as Gwenllian Williams explains, the excitement of promotion can easily become the discomfort of having to manage people who, only yesterday, were peers.

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