Emma Charles- Empathy in Customer Support: Insights and Strategies for Meaningful Interactions
Meet Emma Charles, Snr. Technical Support Enablement Engineer at Everbridge, With versatile expertise spanning Agile project management, cloud technologies, critical event management, and more, Emma's innate curiosity and empathetic problem-solving approach drive her to innovate and make a positive impact.
Check out this video featuring Emma Charles our upcoming speaker for October’s Expo where she shares her experiences at Everbridge and how empathy helps build strong customer relationships and enhance support effectiveness. Get a sneak peek of her compelling ideas before she takes the stage in Las Vegas, NV.
Sophie: Hi everyone. I'm speaking to Emma Charles. Today, Emma's gonna be speaking at our upcoming support driven expo in Vegas in October. She'll be speaking about the importance of empathy in the inbox. Emma, can you introduce yourself for our listeners?
Emma: My name's Emma and I currently work at Everbridge as a senior technical support enablement engineer. Everbridge is a large scale communication platform that provides alerts and notifications during critical events. Working in the support role at Everbridge, I got huge fulfillment from getting surveys from customers saying that you help them, or when you used to answer the phone and the customer would recognize your voice and then instantly be at ease because they know."
Sophie: I'm Sophie Heller. I have worked in ed Tech my whole career. I currently lead tutoring support at ClassDojo. Previously scaled, a company called Out School from myself to about a hundred people. Thinking about the role of empathy in the inbox, Emma, what led you to become really interested in empathy in customer support interactions?
Emma: My first interaction with empathy, customer support and understanding the importance of it was working with a customer who called in and was struggling to get SS m s confirmations from her employees in the middle of the Greece wildfires in 2018. You know, your heart kind of sinks a little bit and you jump straight into that professional mannerisms. It turns out that there was an issue with the local cell tower, and she couldn't get any kind of reply from these guys, and we had no idea if they were safe or where they were located, if they'd been evacuated. So, it was a very eye-opening experience for me and definitely something that I took away from that. And it was one of the first phone calls I actually took engineer.
And it's really important for these business continuity reps to be able to know exactly where they are and exactly what's going on. So not having any communication. Really panicked her and rightly so, and being able to empathize with her, could, you know her slightly calming down a little bit and not leave her in a state of distress when I ended the call and went off to investigate.
So it, it was a very eye-opening experience for me and definitely something that I took away from that. And it was one of the first phone calls I actually took engineer. So it was, uh, very eye and ever that day I've. Shown empathy. I've not hidden that with customers so that they fully understand that I know what they're going through or can empathize with what they're going through.
Sophie: What are some ways that you really try to add empathy to your interactions?
Emma: You can say things like, I completely empathize with that, I completely understand what you're going through, and trying to reassure 'em like that because customers want to know that you understand the issue they're having also the extent of what that issue is and how much that's impacting their day.
So giving them a timescale of when you're gonna come back to them, making sure they understand there's a high priority. Using that to be able to say, I understand this urgent. I'm gonna escalate it. That really shows your empathy to customers and Just being honest with them as well. On that side of things, it's having loads of customers calling in and just explaining to the customer that you're in the middle of something, like that as well they can empathize back. Just keeping that honest and open communication with customers and doing what you can. Even trying different things, troubleshoot, using things in different ways, just really showing that you are trying your hardest to get that resolved for.
You are gonna help them, So you don't even have to deal with a distressed customer. You answer the call and you recognize the customer's voice. Just personal fulfillment from knowing that not only if I helped somebody and made their life a little bit easier.
Sophie: Oh, absolutely. It goes both ways. We wanna give customers a great experience, but we also want to create an environment where someone can continue helping people burnout.
Emma: Definitely when the customer's happy, I was always happy. And I think you kind of have to have that mannerism when you're working in support at times. So it's definitely something that I was always fulfilled. Who doesn't wanna see someone spending the time to write their gratitude and appreciation for something that you've done? That always gonna give you a boost, right?
Sophie: Emma, where can people find you if they wanna talk about empathy or learn more about what you do at Everbridge.
Emma: I'm available in the support driven Slack community. But I can feel free to reach out to me on Such Emma, Charles. Maybe Everbridge as well. I should pop up.
Sophie: I'm excited to see your presentation and learn more about empathy at our, uh, upcoming SSD expo. That's in October, beginning of October in Las Vegas.
Emma: Thank you very much, Sophie.
Check out this video now featuring Emma Charles our upcoming speaker for October’s Expo. Be sure to watch and get a taste of what's to come!
