3 Best Ways You Can Express Empathy and Understanding While Working in Customer Service!

Working in the customer service industry is an experience like no other – you get to meet and speak to so many different people and listen to all sorts of stories. While you will meet hundreds and even thousands of customers during your journey and listen to different queries, all customers want the same thing: to be heard and understood by the customer service agent. 

Every company tries its hardest to minimise mistakes and errors and to provide a seamless service to its customers, however, issues are bound to pop up regardless. What’s important is that the company has a well-trained customer service team ready to solve any issue that arises! 

Why Customer Service Agents Should Use Empathy and Not Sympathy

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

– Theodore Roosevelt

Many people think that empathy and sympathy mean the same thing when in reality they’re two completely different things. When you empathise, you are actively trying to understand how the other person feels. Sympathy, on the other hand, is when you express sadness for the situation the other person is going through. This means that sympathy is characterised by emotions. 

Since emotions come into play, it’s not recommended that customer service agents sympathise with their customers. Emotions have a way of clouding your judgement and making you forget that you’re a customer service agent representing a brand trying to solve a customer’s problem. 

Since getting too emotionally invested in a situation isn’t the best course of action, we’re going to give you a complete guide to how you can express empathy and understanding to your customers, without sympathising. 

Let's get to it! 

1. Acknowledge your customer’s feelings 

If a customer sounds agitated and frustrated, it’s useless telling them to ‘calm down’. In fact, avoid that phrase altogether. Instead, acknowledge their feelings and let them know you understand their situation. This can be done by using phrases like the below:

"I can imagine how you’re feeling" 

"I apologise you had to go through that".  

Simple phrases like that work wonders and can de-escalate a situation.  

2. Dig deeper! 

An easy way agents can show they care about the customer’s situation is by simply digging deeper for more information. When a customer gets their feelings acknowledged and gets asked more questions about the situation, they immediately feel like they’re in good hands. 

Ask as many questions as necessary to understand everything about the problem and when you’re done with asking questions, provide a quick and short recap to the customers to make sure you have all the information you need. 

3. Put yourself in the customer's shoes!

No matter how big or small a situation is, never disregard the customer’s feelings. Actually, it’s important to look at things from the customer’s perception. While it might not seem like a big deal to you, remain professional and assist the customer like you normally would. 

Ask yourself how you would feel if you were in their shoes as you will be able to see this issue from a different light, allowing you to empathise and understand the customer on a deeper level (without letting your emotions affect your professionalism). 

Our customer service agents at Centrecom undergo the appropriate training to prepare them for the different scenarios they may face. Our team makes sure to remain impartial and unbiased and provide each customer with an excellent service, made up of empathy, understanding, and patience! 


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