Customers Expect Empathy Here’s How to Deliver It

Empathy was once considered too soft and squishy for the world of work, but decades of research have shattered that myth. Empathy includes three pieces: sharing others’ experiences, trying to understand their version of the world, and caring for their well-being. When people express empathy, they build deeper, more nourishing relationships. When they receive it, their trust, morale, and happiness rise.

This is true at work as well. Empathic leaders guide more engaged and loyal workforces, in which employees both feel better (experiencing more happiness, resilience, and well-being) and do better (collaborating more efficiently, innovating, and working more productively). By now, any company that wants to take a data-driven approach to culture should ensure that its leaders give empathy and that its workforce receives it.

But what about its customers? In a new global survey, sponsored by Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich), we polled nearly 12,000 people across 11 nations and found that the majority of customers want to feel empathy from the companies they engage with—and that most companies aren’t delivering it.

Empathy in this context represents a customer’s sense that a company and its representatives are sincerely trying to understand and respond to the customer’s emotional state, particularly in moments of vulnerability. For insurance customers, this might mean a representative not only processing a claim, but acknowledging the difficulties a customer is going through, or the company following up after to check in. It’s the ability to see the situation through a customer’s eyes and convert that awareness into caring and responsive action.

Our survey revealed that this type of experience is near the top of consumers’ wish list: 79% of respondents said that a brand’s ability to demonstrate empathy in their interactions with a customer factored into their choices, making it a higher priority than online reviews (73%) and recommendations from friends and family (64%). Sixty-one percent also said they would be willing to pay more to a brand that demonstrates empathy in their interactions with their customers.

But they’re not getting what they seek: 78% of the people we surveyed don’t believe companies exhibit genuine care for their customers, and more than 40% said they had left a brand because of its failure to empathize. This gap will widen as AI permeates customer interactions: More than 70% of our respondents told us they doubt chatbots’ capacity for genuine empathy, and more than 60% worried that AI is destroying customer relations. A phrase like “We care about your call” rings hollow, especially when typed out by an algorithm.

This empathy gap is troubling but points to a market inefficiency. When customers feel they are treated empathically by a brand, they are more likely to remain loyal and recommend it to others. And that, crucially, represents an opportunity: Companies that invest in customer empathy can win major competitive advantage.

Based on our research and experience, here’s a recipe for how to make the most of that opportunity.

Turn empathy into infrastructure.

In the early 2000s, Toby Cosgrove was the CEO of Cleveland Clinic, one of the world’s leading hospitals. After he gave a talk at Harvard Business School, a student raised her hand. Her father needed heart surgery, and they had researched options together. “We knew about Cleveland Clinic and the excellent results you had,” she told Cosgrove, “but we decided not to go because we heard you had no empathy.”

This stopped Cosgrove in his tracks. He realized that Cleveland had been focused on technical excellence in medicine but not on the patient experience. His customers felt little care and were walking away. For this to change, Cleveland needed to transform empathy from a luxury into an urgent priority.

In response, Cosgrove created an office of patient experience and appointed the hospital’s first ever chief experience officer. The new team ran listening campaigns to learn more about patients’ pain points and reimagined care to better serve them. The hospital was reorganized from traditional departments (cardiology, surgery, and so on) into holistic centers, including one that might better serve that student’s father: the Heart and Vascular Institute. Patients that had once been bounced from building to building could now be seen in one place. The patient-experience office also requested more feedback from patients, discussed responses with clinicians, and regularly posted patient satisfaction data online. When they heard patients complaining of long wait times to be seen, they instituted same-day appointments for certain services.

To make empathy real for customers, organizations must move beyond lip service and make it part of their infrastructure. This starts with better data. Rather than simply asking about satisfaction, companies can go deeper—by engaging, for example, in what’s known in the design-thinking world as “journey mapping.” The practice involves charting each interaction point a customer has with a product or brand, the struggles each interaction can produce, and opportunities to improve it. Companies can then strategize concrete changes to their product, service, or support that respond to pain points. Critically, these efforts should be championed from the top; leaders must recognize that empathy is mission critical for building strong customer relationships.

Invest in upskilling.

At Cleveland, Cosgrove also reimagined the workforce. All 43,000 people at Cleveland, no matter their role, were designated as caregivers, and put through “empathy boot camp,” in which they dove into the patient experience. The effects were profound. Within a few years, Cleveland leapt from the middle of the pack to the top 10% of hospitals in terms of patient satisfaction. An unexpected side effect: Employee engagement and satisfaction also skyrocketed, as they could more clearly see the deep value of their work.

Jamil’s lab has found that about half the population believe that empathy is a fixed trait, and that those people are less willing to invest time and energy in understanding others’ emotions. We now know the same is true of customers. In our global study, 45% of customers reported that empathy cannot be taught.

The data say otherwise. Dozens of studies now find that in fact empathy is a skill that can be learned and grown through the right habits. Building on his science, Jamil has pioneered “empathy gyms,” using data-backed techniques to learn these habits and help organizations become healthier and more productive. For instance, he has found that training managers in empathy improves their net promotor score (NPS) and the engagement of their direct reports.

Recently, over the course of two years, Zurich Insurance Group, the sponsors of our survey, worked methodically to improve its employees’ empathy for customers. They designed a training program that focused on the value of empathy, its malleability, and the tools that employees can use in moments of crisis support for customers. The two-day immersive experience sees employees partake in role play based on real scenarios so they can learn how to recognize behavioral cues and adapt how they interact accordingly.

By now, nearly a quarter of Zurich’s global workforce has been upskilled on empathy, through nearly 46,000 hours of total training. This, in conjunction with other initiatives, has had remarkable effects, increasing customer NPS by seven points with responses related to brand advocacy and loyalty showing a strong uplift. Zurich’s success is a proof of concept that any organization can follow. It also drives home a simple point: Empathy can provide a strong return on investment, both internally and externally.

Combine AI efficiency with human moments.

Chatbots can make customers’ experience more efficient—by gathering and sharing information that they need in seconds, for example, instead of keeping them on hold. But when customers must make an impactful decision, or when they express strong emotions, technology is no longer enough. Such moments require a human connection.

Wise companies, in fact, can construct customer journeys in which LLMs detect these moments and “invite” employees trained in empathic interactions to take over the conversation. For example, Vodafone uses its AI assistant, TOBi, to handles routine customer queries, then seamlessly hands conversations to trained human agents when issues become complex or emotionally sensitive. This ensures they meet customer expectations when they need it most.

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If the last decade in customer relationships was about mastering digital convenience, the next will be about restoring human connection at scale. By embedding empathy into their operational DNA, businesses can build resilient customer relationships, drive sustainable growth, and ultimately win in a human-centric marketplace.

Copyright 2025 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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