4 Examples of Customer Service Empathy Statements

In this video, Chris Mounce at EvaluAgent outlines four of the top empathy statements that can be used in customer service.

Four Examples of Empathy Statements for Customer Service

To empathize with someone, we need to actively listen to that person to explore what their reality feels like for them.

We can also check our understanding through reflecting and clarifying what they’re telling us. Now, that allows the customer to express their emotion and how it’s impacted them.

We can then validate how they’re feeling by saying something like,

‘I can understand, Mr. Smith, how frustrating this must be for you’. Or we could say ‘I can understand why you’re angry’.

Naming the emotion to the customer is as important. Don’t shy away from it. Now, is the customer right? Should this not have happened? Tell the customer that.

‘You are absolutely right, Mr. Smith. This should not have happened.’

It’s not about making excuses. It’s taking ownership. And it’s perhaps not the first time that the customer has had to explain the situation, so it’s natural to be frustrated and impatient. We can empathize with that too.

‘It’s perfectly understandable, Mr. Smith, that you don’t want to repeat yourself, you just want this fixed. I will certainly do my best for you.’

Now customers, they’ll likely hear a lot of apologies when something goes wrong. We need to be mindful that it doesn’t come across to the customer as simply a canned response.

So combining an empathy statement with an apology can be really powerful, because it immediately acknowledges those feelings of anger or frustration.

‘It sounds incredibly frustrating, Mr. Smith, I would feel the same in this situation. I’m sorry that you’ve had to experience this.’

As a rule of thumb, any time a customer expresses any negative emotion, look at the situation from their perspective. By looking at it from their perspective you can acknowledge and validate that emotion without necessarily agreeing.

With thanks to Chris Mounce at EvaluAgent for this video

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