Empathy Customer Service Training: Combat Compassion Fatigue with Compassionate Customer Care
Course Overview
The work of caring for others in empathetic customer service can take its toll on employees. A recent Cornell study found 87% of workers report “high or very high” stress levels at their call centers, and 77% report “high or very high” personal levels of stress.
Within these high-stress environments, your team members are exposed to many challenges. Every customer interaction presents a new issue to resolve, and customers come in all varieties. Some are more “difficult” to work with than others. Research has shown that frequent exposure to the hardships of others, including navigating customers through their complex challenges, can lead workers to become detached, apathetic, and numb to the feelings of others.
This is known as compassion fatigue, a condition characterized by a gradual lessening of compassion over time. The two most common symptoms among workers who begin suffering from compassion fatigue are cynicism and emotional exhaustion. Cynicism is characterized by a general distrust of others and their motives. Emotional exhaustion leaves you feeling drained and tired. Together, these elements of compassion fatigue lead to:
- Increased irritability with coworkers or customers
- Difficulty concentrating on the task at hand
- Decreased satisfaction with or detachment from role
In short, compassion fatigue creates employees who are about as caring as a robot. Obviously, having robots interacting with your clients is not a recipe for customer satisfaction. Sadly, this sentiment can spread quickly. When pockets of compassion fatigue emerge, employee engagement and morale across the organization are negatively impacted.
Exceptional customer service requires demonstrating empathy with the customer being helped and expressing compassion when resolving their challenges. In this course, we will focus on training and strengthening your employees' empathy muscles by identifying the warning signs of compassion fatigue and exploring the techniques to rebound and build resiliency. For example, techniques that support self-care and reflection recreate the bonds of empathy for employees experiencing compassion fatigue. Expressing compassion is then no longer burdensome but rather welcomed. Helping employees alter their mindset, be more resilient in the face of adversity, and motivate them toward meaningful action leads to them instilling healthier habits, reducing the stress they feel toward their jobs, and restoring their compassion.
Empathy training for customer service that reinvigorates your people’s ability to empathize and show compassion and paves the way for them to demonstrate a genuine understanding and form an empathetic connection with your customers. Your team can then deliver the memorable, compassionate customer service experiences your company and customers need through empathy training!
Learning Outcomes
Empathy training for customer service focuses on equipping your team members with the tools and resources to recognize compassion fatigue and take actionable steps to combat it. By prioritizing and sustaining their own well-being, your customer service professionals can demonstrate empathy during customer interactions and resolve challenges with compassion and care.
After participating in the Empathy Training for Customer Service course, you can expect your team members to:
- Understand the importance of empathy
- Realize that everyone has a story
- Recognize the warning signs of compassion fatigue
- Use the tools provided in the training to recover from fatigue
- Improve self-care with specific, helpful techniques
- Build and maintain resiliency as a professional skill
Empowered by the knowledge and techniques in the Empathy for Customer Service course, your team members will deliver exceptional customer service, practice effective self-care, and bring empathy, support and compassion to every customer and coworker interaction.
Business Outcomes
The Empathy Training for Customer Service course will support the well-being of all of your customer service professionals. By using the techniques and tools within the program to reduce compassion fatigue, your people will become enthusiastic participants in their work again.
As your customer service professionals demonstrate empathy and communicate compassionately with customers, they’ll not only establish a more positive customer service experience but also realize other company-wide benefits like:
Improved Employee Morale
Enhanced Company Reputation
Improved Customer Satisfaction
Reduced Employee Absenteeism
Program Format
We offer the Empathy Training for Customer Service course as a half-day series of onsite, instructor-led sessions which can also be split into shorter sessions to accommodate schedules.
Empathy Training is also available with live remote training options for distributed teams.
We want all participants to be enthusiastic and engaged in the Empathy Training for Customer Service coursework. To help facilitate that outcome, we present Empathy Training using a multi-media, fun, interactive manner with group exercises tailored to excite your team members.
Materials and job aids are also available to support additional learning reinforcement.
Contact us to explore how we can meet your training goals through Empathy for Customer Service! info@bonfiretraining.com / 800-888-4893
Who should attend?
If you’re seeing signs of compassion fatigue within your team, it’s best to address them as soon as possible. Conditioning your empathy muscles and improving customer and team relationships is a great step for any department or team to take at any time.
Bottom line, if you think you have a team of robots, and you want to help your people feel cared for so they can care for your customers, our Empathy Training course is for you!