30 Science-Based Empathy Statements for Customer Service and Why They Work

Empathy statements are phrases customer service teams use to express that they truly understand how a customer feels in a situation.

Empathy is a crucial skill for humans. It helps us better understand and communicate with anyone we come across, improving the quality of those interactions.

For example, you may sense someone is upset and feel sad yourself. This empathetic emotional response is a natural human adaptation and part of what helps us build communities so well.

According to Verywell mind, there are three types of empathy:

• Affective empathy. Responding to someone else’s emotions appropriately.
• Somatic empathy. Physically feeling what someone else is experiencing.
• Cognitive empathy. Understanding someone else’s mental state.

As your customer service representatives communicate with new people regularly, it’s even more important that they harness the ability to be empathetic.

Demonstrating these skills can help customers feel heard and reduce negative emotions if they’re angry or frustrated.

Empathy vs sympathy

Empathy and sympathy are two terms that people often use interchangeably. Reps can use both emotional responses to build rapport with customers. However, they’re not the same.

Here are two examples of each response in action:

• Empathy. “I completely understand how you feel.”
• Sympathy. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

With the rise of artificial intelligence technology, offering empathetic, humanized interactions may only become more critical to providing fulfilling digitized customer experiences.

According to Forbes Advisor research, the most popular use of AI in business is for customer service. However, a recent Emplifi study revealed that 75% of consumers said that “authentic” customer care experiences are important to them.

This research suggests that customers want to feel heard and understood as individuals, whether they talk to a human or not. Empathy statements that tap into psychology and press the right buttons can help companies resonate better with customers.

Here are five psychological principles behind empathy phrases that appeal to people’s desire for genuine human interactions.

Principle 1: First names help build relationships

When you first meet someone new, you’ll likely offer them your name. You do so to start building a relationship and position yourself as someone the other person can trust.

Asking for someone’s first name when you or your chatbot starts a customer service conversation helps to personalize interactions from the beginning. It also makes us physically feel good.

According to Luis Vega, a psychology professor at Cal State Bakersfield:

“Hearing our name when said in a friendly, non-sarcastic or negative tone of voice is one of the sweetest sounds, as it creates a chemical reaction inside our brain which then releases the feel-good hormones, dopamine and serotonin, demonstrated by functional MRI studies.”

If you already have the customer’s name in the system, asking for permission before using it is good practice. That way, you can be sure you’re off to a respectable start.

Putting this principle to work.

Use the customer’s name to humanize the interaction from the get-go and start building long-term relationships.

You can also add a “[First name]” template when building your chatbot’s responses.

Principle 2: Mirroring customers helps reps appear likable

It’s human nature to feel more connected to people we view as similar to us — physically and in nature. But you can also encourage this subconscious connection with your words and actions.

A study from the Journal of Language and Social Psychology suggests that mirroring someone’s words can help build “liking, safety, rapport, affiliation, and cohesion” within social settings.

If your reps interact with customers through a visual medium (like video chat), this can also include mirroring mannerisms and body language.

In the video still below, you can see Adam Sandler and Brad Pitt mirroring each other. Both men face inward and lean forward while resting their forearms on their thighs.

Source: Become More Compelling

Without hearing any dialogue, you can see that both demonstrate they’re in a harmonious relationship and echo each other’s mannerisms.

Putting this principle to work.

Your contact and call center reps can use the echo effect to:

• Repeat or paraphrase the customer’s problem back to them
• Prove that they’ve been actively listening
• Make the caller feel “heard” and improve customer satisfaction
• Give the customer confidence the solution will be accurate

Principle 3: Accountability and validation can reduce hostility

No one likes to be blamed for a negative customer situation. However, it can help to understand that blaming is an emotionally loaded process that stems from a desire to understand and control the world around us.

In one scientific study, blaming others appeared to reduce negative feelings. So, taking accountability as a company for irate customers could prevent them from going any further on the offensive.

When they’ve calmed and understand it’s nothing they’ve personally done wrong, you can begin to suggest solutions.

Putting this principle to work.

Take accountability and use active verbs to begin to shift a customer’s negative outlook.

Active verbs can help assign the blame to the company when appropriate. For example, “We didn’t update the system at midnight” is much clearer than “The system didn’t update at midnight”).

That way, customers can accept who’s responsible and move past it faster.

Principle 4: Customers relax when they feel similar to reps

If a rep has been through a similar experience to a customer’s issue, it can help to summarize the experience.

Let’s say a customer hasn’t fully checked out or submitted a form. You could say, “I didn’t fully submit my accounts last year for my jewelry-making business and didn’t realize until it was too late.”

Using this strategy plays on the “Similar-To-Me” cognitive bias, where we tend to prefer people who look and think like us.

Source: The Decision Lab

Respecting and validating people’s emotions is another of the most crucial customer service skills.

For example, if someone has ever told you to “Calm down,” you’ll know it’s likely to have the opposite effect. However, “I can understand how frustrating this is” validates the emotion.

Research suggests that offering people emotional validation can help them better regulate their emotions. Doing so can help diffuse a customer’s frustration and calm them down so you can resolve the issue faster.

Putting this principle to work.

Encourage reps to use personal pronouns like “I” to show they’re personally involved in the situation and help customers feel less self-conscious about making a mistake.

Then, validate customers’ emotions to show respect and make them feel comfortable for feeling a certain way in a difficult situation.

Principle 5: Demonstrating expertise gives customers confidence

If a customer is in a rush, furious, or experiencing a repeat problem, you’ll need to convey urgency and actively work on the issue to calm them down.

Encouraging your reps to establish their expertise in these situations can also help to relieve customers’ worries. Doing so taps into the psychological principle known as “authority bias”.

It’s a subconscious event where people see the opinions and conclusions of authority figures as more trustworthy, making them more influential.

While measuring an empathy spiel’s impact may seem impossible, you can tell whether your statements work with specific metrics.

Let’s say a quick survey pops up for customers when they’ve closed a chat with a support rep.

Happier customers are far more likely to rate interactions positively than those who don’t feel like you listened to, or understood them.

What you choose to collect also depends on whose empathy skills you want to measure.

For example, you may wish to measure personal statistics for each of your reps or your entire team after deploying an empathy initiative.

Here are four metrics that can help assess your team’s empathy:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS). Enough successful empathetic interactions can significantly impact how loyal customers feel toward your company.
• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) or dissatisfaction (DSAT). Customers tend to provide higher satisfaction ratings in surveys when they feel heard and understood.
• Customer effort score (CES). Responding with empathy consistently can ensure customers find it easy to interact with your company and resolve problems.
• First contact resolution (FCR). Actively listening and responding with the right words can help you reach the correct conclusion the first time.

If you’re not already doing so, you can collect insights for CSAT or CES in your end-of-chat survey. Or include an NPS request on the customer support page of your website.

Here’s an example of how your survey request could look:

Without tone and body language, it’s easy for miscommunication and irritations to occur — especially within remote customer relations if there’s no visual element.

When our brain puts all its efforts into reading and deriving meaning from language, it can leave diminished cognitive power for emotional regulation, leading to these frustrations.

Offering an additional video chat option allows reps to physically see customers’ feelings and demonstrate empathy through body language and facial expressions.

This can be face-to-face, or customers can keep their cameras off. Either way, your reps can easily offer empathy through tone and personalized service.

It’s a common misconception that customers must download software or set up an account to access this technology.

Apizee’s click-to-video assistance immediately puts customers in front of empathetic team members, removing friction to keep the interaction effortless.

Reps simply send customers a private invitation link to talk through complex or high-emotion subjects step-by-step.