For the longest time, customers have bemoaned the fact that the experiences they have with brands lack empathy.

Almost ten years ago, Accenture published a global study that examined customer perceptions of customer service and experience. The overriding finding from the study was that customers felt that companies had placed too much reliance on digital technologies, leading to the creation of ‘human-less’ customer services. At the time, I took ‘human-less’ as a proxy for an experience that lacked empathy.

Then five years ago, in 2020, Genesys conducted a multi-nation consumer survey, Personalization & Empathy in Customer Experience, and found that: “Nearly half of consumers say the companies they regularly do business with don’t show them enough empathy when delivering customer service”.

While the pandemic may have accentuated this need for a more empathetic customer experience, the desire for greater empathy in how organisations engage with their customers wasn’t new and had simply resurfaced in another piece of research.

At the time, I mused that to deliver more empathy into customer experience at scale and sustainably, organizations would need to develop what I called an empathetic musculature to prevent empathy from being reduced to the delivery of a training course.

To achieve that would require us to think holistically and systemically about what that would mean and would require strategy, systems, processes, design, technology, leadership, and the right sort of people and training to help us get there.

Then, towards the end of 2021, Genesys’ CEO, Tony Bates, and a former colleague, Dr Natalie Petouhoff, published a new book called “Empathy in Action: How to Deliver Great Customer Experiences at Scale“, which was a systematic effort to consider and outline how to build an organization that delivers more empathetic experiences, but also, how to do that at scale.

At the time, I thought it was a comprehensive and much-needed piece of work, and it would put customer concerns and how to respond to them firmly back on the agenda.

However, late the following year, OpenAI released ChatGPT, and ever since, the conversation has been dominated by talk of generative AI and now increasingly agentic AI. As a result, any talk of the need for more empathy in customer experience feels like it’s been crowded out.

Recent research by Zurich Insurance Group aims to change that and aims to put empathy back in the centre of the conversation about customers and the experiences they have with brands.

Conducted in collaboration with Stanford University’s Professor Jamil Zaki, Zurich surveyed 11,560 individuals across 11 countries and found a clear empathy gap – a disconnect between what consumers want and what companies deliver.

Here are some of the main headlines:

• 60% of consumers surveyed stated that they only used companies that genuinely cared about them and their needs.
• 73% of respondents said they would avoid using companies that showed a lack of empathy “toward my situation or circumstances.”
• 43% of consumers surveyed said they had left a brand due to a lack of empathy.
• 61% reported that they would be willing to pay more to companies that deliver on empathy.
• 78% of consumers surveyed believe that most companies only care about making money, not their genuine needs.
• 51% of consumers found AI tools helpful, but 71% did not believe AI could replicate empathetic human connections, and 92% reported that they valued direct human interaction over 24/7 availability.
• Finally, while we know that empathy can manifest itself differently for different people, despite minor variances, the research also showed that the desire for empathy remains consistent across markets, age groups, and genders.

What’s fascinating is that Zurich are not only championing the need for more empathy when dealing with customers, they are putting empathy at the heart of their strategy and are building their own empathetic musculature.

According to Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer at Zurich, “At Zurich, we’ve placed empathy at the center of our global customer strategy. This means embedding it in how we design products, train our teams, engage with colleagues and consumers whilst ensuring it’s a core business imperative.”

It is driving results, too. Kalcher explains that “Our investment in empathy has yielded tangible results, directly contributing to our record financial performance. We’ve seen significant increases in customer advocacy and retention with transactional net promoter scores growing 7 points. Zurich has also seen growth in product density and its brand value has risen by 35 percent. These figures prove that empathy drives sustainable commercial growth.”

Customers should celebrate that Zurich is putting empathy at the heart of its strategy, but shareholders should celebrate too, as it is delivering results.

Other brands should pay attention and follow their lead.

This post was originally published on Forbes.com.
Credit: Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash