An empathy statement is a phrase used by a call center agent to connect emotionally and positively with the caller. It’s a way for the agent to validate the caller’s feelings and show that the agent cares about and acknowledges their issue or feelings. It is one of the most critical call center agent soft skills.
Empathy statements establish and maintain a rapport between the caller and the agent. They can be used to diffuse or de-escalate a situation and leaves the caller feeling more positively about the interaction.
As a result, empathy statements are critical for improving a number of important call center KPIs including:
In reality, as often as possible. Approaching any conversation with empathy puts the agent in a better position to establish rapport and trust with the caller. However, there are certain empathy statements that can be used in important situations, and agents can be coached on those.
One of our customers, a large U.S.-based moving company, monitors their agent performance around empathy statements using MAGIC and Tragic moments.
MAGIC moments are interactions that “Make A Great Impression on the Customer,” such as saying “please” “thank you,” or “How can I help?” Tragic moments, such as saying “Calm down,” “Never,” and “Just a sec,” do the opposite.
While MAGIC moments are empathy statements, think of tragic moments as unempathetic statements.
With a contact center AI platform, call centers are able to monitor for any number of different empathy statements on 100% of voice calls (driven through speech analytics). This is done via phrase analysis - analyzing the transcribed call for phrases and reporting on how often they are used. Looking at the MAGIC and Tragic moments above are examples of phrases that can be monitored.
However, there are cases where you’d like to monitor for empathy of your agents not just on what was said, but how they said it. This is where sentiment analysis, particularly tonality-based sentiment analysis, comes into play.
By uncovering sentiment on 100% of voice calls, contact centers can better understand what’s impacting the candidate experience, identifying opportunities to improve agent soft skills and productivity, and bolster their overall QM strategy.
Joe Hanson leads content marketing at Observe.AI. Want to guest blog? Or maybe you have some expertise you want to share? Connect with him on LinkedIn.