Brands out to prove empathy is a strategy for growth and not a ‘fluffy’ metric
The majority of the marketing world thinks empathy in business is about being nice but there are a growing number of progressive marketers ditching this assumption, viewing empathetic behaviour as a key way for them to have a bigger impact on performance and profit.
The shift stems from the ubiquity of social media and how consequently people expect brands to deliver their messages with humanity and authenticity in the channel. Telefonica and an unnamed car maker are among a growing pool of brands seeking out new ways to realise these expectations, partnering with business consultants Lady Geek to turn empathy into a pathway for profit.
Their efforts, while aligned to their respective objectives, all involve using a three-pronged strategy of emotion, reassurance and authenticity to identify and fill empathy deficits across their organisations. It means accepting that Net Promoter and customer satisfaction scores are not always the best reflection of a business sensitive to customers’ needs and that it needs to be expanded beyond the confines of a HR department.
Speaking at the Financial Times’ Marketing Innovators Summit, Lady Geek’s chief executive Belinda Parmar said marketers must ask themselves who is responsible for empathy in their companies.
She used Ryanair to prove the point; once the company resolved many of the bugbears customers had with the brand in 2014 it saw profits rise two thirds year on year. Another example showed how the best empathasisers in the L’Oreal sales force sold nearly £100,000 more per year than their colleagues.
“Through our own work with Telefonica we have increased customer satisfaction by six per cent in six weeks,” said Parmar.
“There are some in the corporate world that think empathy is feeling sorry for yourself and crying into your prawn sandwich over lunch. What I’m talking about is a hard, measurable metric. In the same way that you measure productivity and profits. I am talking about corporate empathy that can be measured from the boardroom to the showroom. It’s really important that you know where your empathy deficit is in a company and that you focus your resources and impact accordingly.
Her comments are backed by findings from Lady Geek’s Empathy Index from the start of the year, which used a mix of social media data and questionnaires to gauge how empathetic 100 companies were. It found a strong correlation with companies that performed well matched with how well customers and staff felt it treated them.
To come round to this way of thinking, companies need to make sure it's part of a wider shift to be more customer focused. “It’s not important that prioritising empathy is a long-term thing,” added Parmar. “It needs to be part of a bigger movement within a company and then it makes sense. You can’t do something like this as a knee jerk response with short-term goals because that won’t benefit the customer or the business.