A refresher course in empathy | Hacker News Reader

A refresher course in empathy

37signals.com

83 pointsmh_44 comments

Empathy goes both ways. That customer clearly had none, and furthermore didn't believe the support person when they repeatedly tried to explain things to her. We tend to see things like, say, boxers on their website and we instantly feel a connection to a person where none may be warranted. To unilaterally make that connection with an abusive person is a recipe for unhappiness and disappointment.

I feel reminded about my startup time, we had customers like this. "The website you built doesn't work." - "Why, what's wrong?" - "I don't know, but I can't get on the internet today. This is your fault. I want my money back." - "Sir, if your internet is down, that's nothing we can help you with. Also, I thought things were going pretty good with our project." - "If you can't help me, you're clearly incompetent. I'm going to sue you. You broke my emails, too." And so on.

A few times we actually sent someone over there to help with (in this example) their faulty DSL connection. This never solves anything. There won't be any gratitude, and the customer will be reinforced in thinking it's your fault. In essence they're being rewarded for abusiveness and unwillingness to think, too. From now on, every time his connection breaks it will be your fault. And you can't bill that time either. Furthermore, while you're sending someone over on the basis of goodwill and empathy, that guy will badmouth you all over town.

Of course, people have bad days, and there can be mitigating factors. But if someone is clearly not listening to a single word you say and is incapable of understanding facts, it's time to let that customer go. I can't say this emphatically enough: it's not worth it. Identifying personally with that person will only make you suffer even more - you have to keep in mind that they're certainly not making 1% of the effort you're expending on their problem.

Granfaloonism, as per Vonnegut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon

edit: this is in re to the first paragraph on unnecessary connection

As incredible as these customer interaction stories are, they are 100% true. Customer service is an area where having experience as a parent or at least working in a day care or school before being an entrepreneur would have really paid off!

There is no thumbs up big enough for this. My first thought after reading the article was "what kind of lapdog are you trying to be, stand up for yourself woman!" I immediately felt bad about that because she is trying to be an empathetic person, but how can you empathize with this? Someone tries to help you, you are an jerk to them. Would you keep helping your parents being an absolute jerk, or would you tell them to knock it off, then help them?

I occasionally work with customers nowadays (but spent years in customer service) and I cant help but think this is a person who is going to be worn out by hordes of inconsiderate jerks because they are empathizing too hard.

I remember reading "Hire the Right Customers"1), which kind of goes against this notion to try to please everyone. Some customers are just the wrong customers and not worth collecting.

1) http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch04_Hire_the_Right_Custome...

I ran an outsourced IT helpdesk company for many years, as well as online products. We used to get clients like this all the time. Here's how my staff were trained to handle this situation - the support staff would have asked the lady the name of her site, and the background story. Then patiently gotten to the bottom of the issue. After that would then either submit a support ticket on her behalf, or would call the company and put her in touch with them.

Clients like this are very costly, especially if your business model isn't equipped to deal well with this, but all that said, empathy is about feeling what the other person feels. She clearly wanted a fix, so go fix it.

But you were billing someone for it, right? They don't really get to do that in this situation. (if you were)

What possible worth would we get from being empathetic with people who can't even understand the difference between ours and somebodyelse website? They are unlikely to become customers, and each support incident cost the company money.

Yeah I am sure there is an emotional reason for it, but I am asking for a cold hearted logic reason.

>They are unlikely to become customers

My reading of the original post was that she already was a customer but couldn't understand that her current problem wasn't actually with Basecamp. And I'm sure you know the stats about the difference in cost between acquiring new vs. retaining existing customers...

It's quite logical to practice one of the most important human communication skills at every opportunity possible. Practice makes perfect, and will hone the skill for use in situations where it will lead to direct benefits. If something isn't practiced, it can backfire when employed incorrectly.

It also very much feels like it'd go against the point of being empathetic if the only time it's employed is in beneficial situations.

A good, logical reason to be empathetic in all situations would be to help yourself. If you needlessly act negative toward another person, you will be more inclined to be negative about similar situations in the future. You are essentially training yourself to be negative which, I can assure you, bleeds into the rest of your life.

It's important to recognize that even if you don't see value in being empathetic toward a particularly difficult individual, under different circumstances you are someone else's difficult individual. The paraphrased idiom "treat others as you want to be treated" has existed for thousands of years, for a lot of good reasons.

That first argument is unlikely to convince someone coming from a cold hard logic standpoint. Coming from a cold hard logic standpoint, that person is going to act in their best interest/companies best interest in all cases (or so the theory goes). I understand where you're coming from, but "Be nice to everyone to train yourself to be nice" isn't the optimal path from the companies perspective.

Though you're second argument is effective in a global community kind of context.

I agree that it is likely not a logical reason from the perspective of a company. I was simply providing a logical reason, in general.

Though, an argument could also be made that being a nicer person is definitely a quality that most organizations would applaud, especially in a customer service position.

I've got a real-world example of that. Many years ago, I was an easily-angered driver. Once on the way to work, someone cut in front of me. I honked, and flipped off the driver as I passed. A few minutes later, pulling into work, that car was pulling into the same parking lot. Come to find out she was one of the directors at the company I worked for. I don't think I ever flipped off another car since then.

I suppose there's a lot we wouldn't do if we apply cold hearted logical reasons. Sometimes it's nice to not apply cold hearted logical reasons (even though I do see your point).

That said, one 'cold' reason could be being able to write a post about it that puts the writer and 37 signals in a good light. Another could be for the author to just want to feel better about herself, because she helped someone else and/or because she constructed a nice story (and we humans like stories)...

Support requests should be treated as opportunities to make a positive brand experience. Even if this person doesn't become a high paying customer, they might become an advocate. Perhaps they overhear a conversation about your product and say - oh I know <company> - they are so friendly and helpful!

If your support is good enough, people will even tweet about how amazing you are. It's hard to pay for advertising that effective!

If you're looking for a case study, checkout Zappos history!

Would that customer even know what she's advocating? I bet she'd end up advocating her hosting company, not 37sig.

So you go the extra mile, find contact info for her host and give it to you, what's the response? Probably "OH now you're pawning me off on someone else?!"

The classic story of customer service is Nordstrom giving a customer a refund on tires (they don't sell tires). But that's an uncomplicated transaction -- 'I went to Nordstrom and they gave me my money back'.

Maybe I'm just being negative, maybe it's from doing phone support in college (explaining an ISP vs. a web host to $5/month customers is not fun) or working retail for years before that... but man, supporting the public is hard and it's really hard to figure out when going the extra mile is a net loss for everyone.

Zappos is great, but I wonder what would happen if I called them for help with my iPhone... ;)

>Zappos is great, but I wonder what would happen if I called them for help with my iPhone... ;)

You might be surprised, but the expected result of calling Zappos for help with your iPhone is that they would give it their best shot to be helpful and get it working. There are limits, of course, and I hope you don't try it, but that is how they are trained. At least that is the mantra from Tony Hsieh, in several talks I have listened to over the years.

Tony keeps telling a story about how he was out partying with some friends once, they got home at 2am, and one friend said they'd like to order pizza. "Let's call Zappos and have them get us a pizza!" he suggested. They called Zappos, and the service rep patiently looked up the nearest late night delivery pizza places and gave them the phone numbers. There was a small hesitation to start, but the rep's training kicked in to give world class customer service. And Tony gets to tell that story forever...

And if everyone called Zappos for them to do their dirty work it literally wouldnt work. This is only possible because it is the exception, not the rule.

For a customer that just doesn't get it, I don't see why the dishwasher/vacuum cleaner analogy is bad as long as it's delivered nicely.

I think part of the reason it's bad is that the customer still won't get why you won't get them.

It's also bad because the solution was actually pretty straight forward send them the support docs (or the support contact) for their website. At least then you're pointing them in the right direction.

I doubt the customer failed to understand that the customer support rep thought that the issue wasn't their fault; the customer was getting angry because they thought the rep was wrong.

Analogies don't convince and are often seen as condescending or evasive: "I asked for help, and I get word games"

Ahh, see, I was under the impression that the customer was failing to understand. If they think the rep is wrong then that's a whole other problem. If that's the case then you're right, it does come off as condescending.

I'm not sure of the best way to convince a customer (who is wrong) that is questioning the rep's expertise. Provide more data and explain differently, I guess.

Amusingly, this post made a lot more sense when I remembered that boxers are a type of dog.

That said, it's a great post and something that is all too easy to forget when you work with people, who often get angry at you when things aren't going their way. It's really kind of unfortunate, too; most companies have trained people that anger really is the best way to get something. If you yell, you might get a manager, and eventually the company just wants to placate you so that you go away. Now, people just reach for anger...

I have a lot of empathy for people that just don't know what's going on -- so I wouldn't make fun of them for the initial mistake; but when someone politely explains something simple to you /twice/ and you're still being a jerk about it, I don't think those people deserve any empathy at all. The customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is just an idiot. Kudos to her for her positive attitude, but I don't think the customer deserved her kindness.

Speaking of customer support... I'd love to read some good information about how to successfully set it up in a somewhat organized fashion. Tricks, tips, do's and don'ts... as well as some advice on trying to make the proper tradeoffs.

Anyone got good books or other resources they can recommend?

Check out http://supportops.co - Chase and the folks there publish some good stuff.

A while ago, I listened to a Mixergy interview with the founder of HelpScout. They have a content marketing strategy, and produce a lot of quality free content on customer service issues.

https://www.helpscout.net/resources/

Today you, tomorrow me.

Just to add content: hardware, software, programming, protocols, networks, chips, cords, formats, and onward. We are in a profession that creates a certain amount of ego once we have overcome an obstacle. There is an endless amount of information with an endless growth rate regarding technology. We are all ignorant -- it is just to what degree and which niche! I still remember 15 years ago and having my feelings hurt on a daily basis on EFnet. It hardened me, but I also learned how to dish out tolerance.

> Today you, tomorrow me.

For context, ambiate is likely referring to http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/elal2/have_you_ev...

When I saw this was on the 37signals blog, I reflexively expected a post by DHH, and now my funny bone is disappointed.

Snark aside, any trick you can use to place the humanity of the other person you're interacting with in the forefront is going to help you avoid snapping at them, which is generally a good thing. The world can always use a little less hostility.

Empathy to that level gets expensive! You have to really feel it to do it.

TLDR

Even if it's not your issue, you now own the problem. The customer has contacted you guys on this issue before and wasn't given a good enough answer. Now the customer is contacting you guys again in hopes of a better answer. If you don't give a good answer, then the customer may continue contacting you guys. You aren't saving time by brushing the customer off.

You could have saved the day by looking up the information in the first place and relaying that to the customer. If and email isn't doing the trick, then place a phone call.

----

I used to do tech support for Microsoft Windows and we gave our best effort to give the customer information to fix dang near anything on their computer. Most people who called in were in our area of support, but sometimes we would get people calling in about other products. People saw us as their last line of support, their only lifeline when nobody else could help them.

I think we were effective in this role because more than any other support desk, we had a great big picture view. A support rep for Intuit might know Quickbooks well, but might know nothing about the rest of the system which Quickbooks sits on. So, in some cases they might say "It's a Windows problem" and pawn the issue on us.

I think just talking to people over the phone really helps as well. When you have someone who is so obviously tech challenged, then it's sometimes just that much more difficult when dealing with yet another tech abstraction over basic communication.

So, customer calls in with something we don't support. In a friendly conversation we would explain that big picture view and tell the customer exactly what they need to know when contacting Quickbooks again. Sometimes the issue was so simple we could just Google the answer. Sure, it's wasting valuable support time, but in the end it could have saved time because the customer wouldn't continue to be bounced back and forth.

This seems like a story without an ending. A customer did something, she reacted and regretted it. Sure she's saying she should be more empathetic in the future but based off of what? The customer didn't reply after she made the "mistake".

How does she know it would have made any difference? Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe things would have turned out worse. I don't see any evidence of a lesson.

The article she linked to is much more useful IMO: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3566-found-in-translation It explains a technique and why it's worth doing.

Goodness, the irony of 37 signals lecturing others about empathy.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/02/douchebaggery.html

and from the above article:

http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0120a86...

Great post. Shared it with our support team and everyone appreciated it so thank you!

Proud to say one of the guys came back with this: "she should have just written her the first time: here write [to] these guys instead" :)

I recently started to take an empathetic approach to answering customer queries. I noticed their responses changed significantly from angry to accepting.

I remember reading a post on these pages that explained Apple's sales and support methods... to empathize with the customer. One message I got from giving customer feedback was that instead of saying 'No, that is not the problem' when a customer complains, I start by saying 'I understand how frustrating that could be'.

That tone is enough to put the most angered customer at ease. With that approach, I rarely ever require a second response.

I kept wondering why they didn't just contact the other company's support for the customer and make sure she was in contact with them. That's the kind of service customers rave about.

SVN is in that URL: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3567-a-refresher-course-in-em...

Does 37signals still use SVN and uses it to host their content directly?

I think it is an abbreviation for signals versus noise (s/n) which used to be the title of their blog.

it's still called signal vs. noise, but they use the name as heavily any more. From the page header:

You’re reading Signal vs. Noise, a publication about the web by 37signals since 1999.

This is a wonderful article - too often we get caught up in our bubble of expertise -- most people don't understand basic software/internet architecture. As the Woz said, it's our job as tech workers to make things as intuitive as possible.

"From now on, in my mind: Every time there’s a challenging case, the customer owns at least two boxers."

A great lesson in how to make empathy something that you know is useful and something that you practice.

Lesson learned: don't hire gingers as tech support

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