3: Empathy with Natalie Ruhl

Charlotte Ward: 0:14

Hello, welcome to episode three of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. For our very first week, we're talking about empathy and customer support. So listen on for five leaders talking about that very topic. I would like to welcome to the podcast today my good friend Natalie Ruhl. Natalie, could you introduce yourself?

Natalie Ruhl: 0:40

Hi Charlotte. My name is Natalie Ruhl, and I'm currently the Director of Community Operations at SoundCloud.

Charlotte Ward: 0:47

Cool. Today we're talking about empathy. What are your thoughts on empathy and customer support?

Natalie Ruhl: 0:53

Empathy for me is absolutely one of the, I want to say, pillars of any kind of workplace behavior. It's something that you need. That doesn't just lend itself to customer support where you interact with outside people, but it also lends itself to working in a team and working with other people within an organization.

Charlotte Ward: 1:18

Do you think it's teachable as a skill?

Natalie Ruhl: 1:20

It's certainly something that I think some people have more of, some people have less of. But I also think that it's absolutely something that you can teach at least awareness of. I want to say the skill here is more being able to very quickly kind of see eye to eye with a stranger or like find a level with someone. And empathy is a big part of that. But at the same time, it's not the most important skill, I want to say.

Charlotte Ward: 1:52

So do you hire for it or do you or do you coach for it, or is it a combination of both?

Natalie Ruhl: 1:58

It really depends on on the person. I think we definitely have both kind of personality types on the team. In an interview situation, we always try and ask questions around empathy or around the general put yourself in the customer's shoes kind of situation. However, not everybody jumps on those. And that's fine. That's absolutely fine because I think it can be something that is taught, especially we use quite a lot of role play for this. Or we create a persona of our classic customer to help people kind of like have a face or like an idea or a shape of like the person that they're talking to on a daily basis. We don't use phone, which oftentimes I think can make it a bit more difficult as well. Reading a situation out of an email can can sometimes be quite hard. So we try and encourage people to sometimes even like read an email out aloud to kind of get a bit of a better feeling for it. It is something that you learn over time. And it is a great thing to learn because it's also one of the things I think that is a key skill as you grow from a level one agent to grow within support or to even grow outside of support. It's a key skill to have to kind of understand what motivates people and how do people uh do things, what what drives them. But you certainly try and like create this awareness very, very quickly because I feel it helps out a lot in the very repetitive, sometimes stressful world to know that there is someone that is like picking up on your cues. Empathy can come in so many shapes and forms, and it can sometimes also be too much, you know. Empathy goes a certain length, but then you might not um want to empathize too much because it can cloud your judgment or it can it might be unhelpful in a situation.

Charlotte Ward: 3:56

Getting too personally involved. Um, yeah. And also it's not just about clouding judgment necessarily. It can stop you from coming to a solution and maybe also cross boundaries, you know. Yes, absolutely. So I'm interested in what you said there about uh role play and encouraging people to read out emails and communications aloud to see how they feel. It is that part of the role play that you consider, or do you do more formal exercises?

Natalie Ruhl: 4:25

Again, it it depends on on the kind of person. I don't think we usually do the one where you we set someone in a room and we kind of like I I let me play the customer now and and you be that one, or and then we reverse roles to see. Because I found that these there are some people that thrive on those, you know, these are probably people that also love a stage, but not everybody in my in my team is is that kind of person. So mentioning things like, well, but have you considered that this is where this person is at, or ask a couple of questions, um, is more how I think empathy is less awkward for people often, you know, like less intrusive or like more timely. There are difficult conversations to be had, and then we might role-play it out, but in the general day-to-day, oftentimes it's just like, well, I get that that this you know, particular query or ticket you've been getting from this customer seems maybe hilarious to you, or it's like, oh, I do not understand how how that customer couldn't solve that problem on their own. But we oftentimes also use um images of like, well, just think about your mother, you know, probably not the tech sevyist, or we all know this person that um isn't the tech sevyist, and how would you help them? You know, that's clear to me, but is that clear to this other person that isn't working in my role, that doesn't have all this experience with this product? It's sometimes dialing back to simplifying things, not in a patronizing way, but empowering someone to achieve the result on the other end.

Charlotte Ward: 6:00

When you're coaching for empathy, you're doing it real time mostly, you're encouraging certain certain types of behaviors for certain tickets.

Natalie Ruhl: 6:08

But also we use um a tool where from the leadership side we review a few conversations per week and look at where maybe was something not formulated or spelled out quite right, or where was someone maybe giving uh a detailed explanation or using conford sentences, whatever it may be, in order to help them to communicate better.

Charlotte Ward: 6:33

Is that is that part of a wider quality review program? Yes. That's all for this session. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash three for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.