171: Fireside with Sandra Thompson

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 171 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today I'd like to welcome Sandra Thompson for a fireside chat. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today, Sandra Thompson. Sandra, it's lovely to have you join me for the first time. I've been a keen follower of yours for the last couple of years, and uh I am very interested in what I know will be a topic that's of great interest to our audience as well today. But first, before we get uh into your field of expertise, um, would you like to introduce yourself?

Sandra Thompson: 0:59

Thank you, and thank you. Um thank you for those kind words. A couple of years, good grief. I can't believe I've been on LinkedIn that long. Um so, well, thank you, and and hi everyone. I'm Sandra. I do a few things. I lecture at a business school, so I try and I try teaching uh 18, 19, and 20-year-olds either people management and leadership or a bit of emotional intelligence and customer experience. We'll come on to that in a bit. The other things that I do is that I'm a consultant in customer experience, and I've done that for about 10 years now, but it's only really been in the last probably last 18 months or so, I've kind of found my groove. And that's the blending of emotional intelligence and customer experience. And the final thing I do is is a bit of coaching on the side.

Charlotte Ward: 1:51

Yeah, lovely. Thank you. I've I've been talking about um particularly empathy in customer support for first, I mean, it feels like forever, but like you, it's probably only like the last two or three years, like it consistents consistently. But um, that's why I was excited to have you come on and talk about the emotional intelligence side of this, which which for me I think I sort of somewhat conflate with empathy, but I know there's a whole lot more to it. Um so thinking about this in a customer experience, customer support context, and given that this is a fireside chat today where my guests get to bring their own topic, what would you like to talk about?

Sandra Thompson: 2:32

I want to talk about empathy versus emotional intelligence. Lots and lots and lots of stuff all over LinkedIn, lots of lots of keynote speeches, lots of publications talking about empathy. And I think it's important, but actually I've got a big question mark over the word empathy, and I kind of trying to encourage people to think about emotional intelligence. Now, the first thing that's a bit of a soapbox of mine is why is it that we seem to be comfortable with the term empathy, but we don't seem comfortable with the word emotion or emotional? Hmm. I guess that's one to cover another time. Perhaps we can come back to that. But the point around empathy, and you know, particularly the year that we have had, the need for people to be compassionate, the need for us being present for one another, and that sounds a bit heavy duty, but just even asking, How are you? Waiting for the response and properly listening to what is said as a response. We are having to re-educate ourselves on what it is to be thoughtful because, quite frankly, we don't know what people have been through in the last year. You know, certainly some of the people that I'm teaching, some of the clients that I have, I know that they've been personally affected by COVID. And when I ask them, how are you? and they know it's a genuine question, they really feel heard, they really feel valued, and it changes the relationship completely. So I guess my my fireside chat contribution is how empathetic are we? What does it take for us to be empathetic? And can we honestly get into somebody else's shoes?

Charlotte Ward: 4:32

I think uh super set super interesting set of questions. I need to, I need to take, I have two things that I would like to to kind of approach, two angles I'd like to approach this from. The first is just to I I I feel like we ought to rewind slightly in a second and go back to kind of just what is the difference between empathy and emotional intelligence. I feel like there's a definition there that needs to be had. Um and uh and you know, from my point of view, thinking about empathy in the workplace, empathy from customer experience, customer support um perspective. And particularly drilling down even further on my own personal view of it, because I have only ever worked in high-tech companies with high, highly technically um and engineering-focused teams. Um, under those circumstances, what the way I've always defined empathy, and this will come back to our definitions in a minute, perhaps, is is that it isn't like overly personal compassion. For me, empathy in that context is a more intellectual process. It is a more walking alongside your customer to help solve their problems and understanding their context and understanding their needs, but not but in a detached way, not getting too involved, not getting too emotional. So, so that's kind of my toppance worth. And I'm gonna stop there because I think I want to really rewind you, having told you what I think of empathy as. What how do you see the difference between empathy and emotional intelligence?

Sandra Thompson: 6:12

So there's there's quite a few answers to that. So I'm gonna start with the with the headline, which is empathy is one of the 12 competencies within emotional intelligence. Now, emotional intelligence is divided into kind of four main areas, and the first area of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, and so when you're learning the skill of emotional intelligence, you absolutely start with understanding what emotions are coming up in you, what are they, why are they coming up, and do you want them? Because in actual fact, what I have noticed since I've been trained as a Goldman coach is that I used to ignore them. I never gave them any time at all. I just used to think, oh, well, that's annoying, crack on. But what I hadn't realized is that if I hadn't stopped for a moment, acknowledged what that emotion is, chosen to be in it or not, it was having a massive impact on everything I was doing straight after I felt it. I mean, I don't know about you, but certainly there is no question that when I'm dealt with someone who is angry or aggressive or frustrated, this thing called emotional contagion happens and we catch some of that emotion. So the idea with this emotional intelligence framework is that the first thing you learn is to know how you're feeling and just to decide pretty much whether or not you want to respond. Yeah, I know that's what I'm feeling. I don't really want to feel it, I'm gonna think something else, or react. Yeah, I'm angry, I'm gonna react, and then you fire out some emails, you lose your temper, and then you've got to undo all of that stuff. So that's one thing that empathy is one of the 12. But you can have empathy without emotional intelligence, which is what we've just talked about. We can talk about three levels of empathy. There's the cognitive, which I think is what we're talking about here, which is yeah, I get that you're feeling either angry, sad, delighted, disappointed, whatever it might be. Yeah, I recognize that. I felt that before. You let's try and do these things. Uh, second one is the emotional state. So one's cognitive, second one down is emotion that I'm feeling the emotion. You know, when you watch a film and they're crying, or if you speak to someone and they're angry, you can sense that emotion in you. And the third one is compassionate empathy, where you feel moved by what you're seeing or hearing or reading to want to take action. Now, in the customer experience world, ultimately we're looking for compassionate empathy because there's nothing worse, is there, than speaking to someone or try, you know, either going into a store or or being on a in a contact center um environment where someone says, Yeah, I can only imagine how terrible that is. I still can't do anything about it. Yeah, it does nothing. I hear you.

Charlotte Ward: 9:17

I totally get it. Yeah, yeah. Doesn't it make it worse? It seems it seems like they're just reading from a script, right? They have a script in front of them that says, Tell the customer you understand.

Sandra Thompson: 9:28

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely the case. And so empathy has its place. I just think that when we think about emotional intelligence and we really understand the neuroscience behind emotion, we would probably question empathy a little bit more. And we would probably invite people to just ask a question and wait for the response without trying to get into the customer's shoes. You know, it's a it's a hackney phrase, isn't it? Walking, walk for a mile in the customer's shoes. I'm just saying I don't think it's possible in some cases, but definitely either you're working with colleagues or you're working with customers, just being heard, knowing that that person has asked you a question and you have properly listened and asked a follow-up question, which is in recognition of the answer they gave you, changes relationships and it creates these emotional connections, which is actually what we're really about.

Charlotte Ward: 10:31

Yeah, totally. Um I absolutely I absolutely agree with everything you said that actually what you want is a type of empathy that compels you to action, that compels you to resolve your customers' problems, to help them get to their needs and and probably their desires, which may be very different things, right? But but um the thing that I wonder is in a customer support, customer in any kind of customer service environment, and I this was one of my very first topics on this podcast. In a customer service environment, if you get too involved and you do that five times a day, 20 times, a hundred times a day, it's emotionally exhausting for you as that provider of the service. So I think that there is for me a need to be able to either contain or detach from or regulate that emotional involvement from as you are experiencing that empathy for your customer. How do you see that? Because I that for me, that detachment is needed, otherwise you will burn out by the end of a morning in some roles, right?

Sandra Thompson: 12:00

Yeah. Um so I mean, I think this area is absolutely fascinating. So I have I've always said that for people who are on the front line, the people who are taking calls, who are dealing face to face with customers, whatever it is, how supportive is the organization to that emotional contagion? Because if you're not taught how to a bit like Teflon, really, not to absorb it, to be aware of it, to but have peace of mind to know that you're not being exhausted and burnt out by this thing, how are we equipping people with that skill? Because the fact is you're caught between a rock and a hard place. You are gonna deal with an awful lot of calls. The chances are that you're gonna deal with a raft of different emotions. You'll know that those emotions aren't your fault, but they are being directed at you. And unless you're taught the skill to be resilient to that, you're never gonna want to show up in an appropriate way to every customer. So I think the agent themselves, the customer support member of staff, I'm not surprised that they get burnt out. I'm not surprised that they leave. I'm not surprised that they're exhausted. They must be shattered, particularly after everything that's happened last year. But I do, and this might be controversial, I hold team leaders, leaders accountable for the fact that they are not preparing those contact centre staff, those support staff with the skills to not absorb all of this stuff. Because they they're gonna get this barrage anyway, help them because otherwise you've got all sorts of problems, and then they leave.

Charlotte Ward: 13:56

Yeah, which is a huge overhead from a uh commercial point of view. It makes complete sense to retain those stuff, doesn't it? So, so if nothing else, what leaders might see to be superficially is a waste of time, ultimately makes complete commercial sense.

Sandra Thompson: 14:14

There is so much written now, more than ever, proving that the skill of emotional intelligence makes companies more money. In fact, it creates a healthier workforce, they're less often off with stress, there's fewer heart attacks, there's fewer strokes, there are people who are because, and this is this is the thing that I don't think organizations have got very good at measuring. Here's a conversation with someone who is burnt out. Here's the representation of your brand with someone who's burnt out. Over here, with my other hand, I'm waving furiously, but you can't see it. It is a member of support staff who has been invested in. Hmm. So that customer has had a more engaging, more emotionally connected conversation. And every time they ring, they feel valued and they feel heard. What on earth is going to happen to their custom? Well, here's the thing they'll stay with you, they'll bring more people. Look at what happened with First Direct. They must have got so much more business because the people on the end of the phone were not traditional technical experts, they were personable human beings. So I totally get that leaders question the value they get back from these types of initiatives. But the interesting thing, and actually, I learned about this about six months ago. Um, I I don't haven't seen the technology myself, but there's a technology that prompts agents to use certain techniques to become more emotionally intelligent, to actually use more empathy. Within the first quarter, their sales went up 23%, and their employee engagement went up 66%.

Charlotte Ward: 16:02

Wow.

Sandra Thompson: 16:04

I mean, still got questions about that anyway, but so we won't dig deeper into that. But Crikey, how much more proof do you need?

Charlotte Ward: 16:12

Yeah, yeah. So you're retaining your employees, you're uh and through that retention, you are just directly saving costs in terms of the the overheads of people coming and going to your to your organization. But the but you're retaining customers as well. It's it's simple maths.

Sandra Thompson: 16:32

And quite honestly, there's the ethical thing here too, you know. When we think about again, you know, the year that we've had so much uncertainty, dealing with a whole raft of emotions that people have probably never had to deal with before, with all of the drama going on in their own lives as well. Surely 2021 has got to be the time when we recognize that and we equip people and we reinvest in them to make sure that they have the resources to draw upon things, simple things, journaling, meditation, just taking two minutes out, breathing exercises. You know, this is a rocket science, but it does mean creating the balance between here's your shift and the stuff you've got to get done, and here's your targets, and here's your measures. Oh, and by the way, we are interested in your health and well-being. So we're going to make sure that you do take that break and you do do these things because we know that we will create a healthier workforce that will serve us sustainably if we go down that route. And that's why I say it's more than empathy, it's got to be emotional intelligence because the self-awareness, the ability to have the emotional balance, the ability to understand who's who in the organization and to influence, to be able to be inspirational, to work really well in a team, all of those wonderful things that make up the competencies of EI, it's more than just empathy.

Charlotte Ward: 18:12

Yeah, yeah, I love that. And and I I just want to uh explore a little further, perhaps as a final point, something you said before, which was um about because that self-awareness, being aware of your emotions, understanding what they are, labeling them, lots of like meditation kind of themes coming through here, um, labeling them. But but actually I think in that process, you mentioned like having this Teflon coating. And I think I think it is it's not just about the the resilience, isn't just treating it like as water off a duck's back, though, is it? The resilience comes more from everything you said in the run-up to that about that awareness. I for me, I I you know I never remember a source of where I've heard something. So the only thing I can tell you is I heard this on a TED talk a long time ago. Can't remember which one or who it was or anything. I'll go and dig it out afterwards. But that sort of awareness that your feelings are not you, they don't have to overwhelm you or encompass you. They are not who you are, they're things you experience. And what I heard on the TED talk was something like um, acknowledging this feeling is with me. Um it's going to walk alongside me for a little while and then it will walk away. And I really love that. And I think that's a for me, that's always been like kind of how I I hadn't really articulated it as such, but that's kind of a bit I realize how I think of feelings quite often. Um, but I really love that that visualization of just being with your emotions. And I think that's kind of a for me, that's how I transition through certain parts of the day and and how I encourage. Like encourage my children to think of their feelings, you know. Um, and and I hope that builds resilience. And I think that could be like a super interesting take on some of the things you said about kind of being aware with them and choosing to acknowledge them or or not, actually.

Sandra Thompson: 20:17

So there are lots of things in there. The first thing is that you cannot ignore an emotion because it will only become louder and start to amplify if you try to ignore it. That's a that's a proven fact. The second thing is that emotions come from our socialization, how we've been brought up, how we have the significant adults in our lives have given us our values and our beliefs and all that kind of magical stuff. Then we've got the whole thing around the experiences that we've had and the context in that moment. And the amazing thing about that is that what emotions are are a bunch of chemicals, serotonin, oxytoin. So when you talk about how emotions are sitting alongside us, it's true in that the chemicals that are going on in our body are as a result of a prediction of what we think might happen. So the fact is, it's not necessarily the truth, it might not be that thing, but because of your socialization, your experiences to date, your body kicks in with all these emotions to prepare you for what it thinks it might be. So one thing I was taught was a saying, which is you don't have to believe what you think. And that can help you manage the chemicals in your body.

Charlotte Ward: 21:45

I love that. I love that. That makes complete sense to me. So just to round out, then it's been a super interesting conversation. I wish I had another another hour to spend with you, but but we must wrap up for this time. But please do come back first. Um I'm sure we can explore this some more. But but as we round out on on the uh the end of this particular chat, thinking about people out there who are in like more senior roles, either helping or coaching in customer service or customer support, those kind of arenas, or actually leading teams. What would be your advice? If you could distill it right now, and I don't want to be so so uh I don't want to ask you to to distill it to one sentence. I think that's too much. But like, what was the first thing people should think about in those circumstances from that workplace point of view?

Sandra Thompson: 22:48

It's really about inviting the conversation. So I remember once a boss asking me how I was when in the five years I'd worked for them previously, they had never asked. So I think there's an opportunity for leaders to say we've reflected on last year, we know how hard you've worked, we need to recognize emotion in the workplace, we're gonna start doing some stuff. So it might feel a bit odd, but we are gonna start doing some stuff. Because if they do it without any explanation, if they start to encourage conversations about how people feel out of the blue, people won't trust them. They'll think it's a new marketing initiative, they'll think it's a campaign to get everyone getting all ready for Valentine's Day, whatever it might be. So I think if leaders have the courage and the conviction to say we're recognizing everything that had gone on, we really want to ensure that you feel comfortable and safe and able to describe stuff so that you can bring your full self forward. Do it that way. Have the courage to start it, but please don't start it unless you are having the intention to continue, because that's worse than not doing it with full integrity in the first place. That wasn't a one-word response or a one sentence. Sorry about that, Charlotte.

Charlotte Ward: 24:13

That's quite all right. I knew you couldn't possibly conflate it into four words. Uh that makes complete sense, uh that makes complete sense to me. If you're going to begin the conversation, it has to be genuine, has to have genuine intent. Otherwise, people aren't going to invest in it anyway.

Sandra Thompson: 24:29

That's it. And if they feel the courage, and I've seen this work magically, if the one leader will share their own story of how they've juggled this, that, and the other, by role modeling that it will create the conversation 100%.

Charlotte Ward: 24:47

That makes complete sense to me. Thank you so much for joining me today, Sandra. It's been a pleasure. Please come back and have another chat. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Sandra Thompson: 24:55

I'm really chuffed.

Charlotte Ward: 24:56

Thanks. Talk to you soon. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one seven one for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.