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The word is empathy

4/1/2014

Back in January, Bruce Temkin, managing partner and “customer experience transformist” for Temkin Group, a Waban, Mass.-based customer experience research and consulting firm, named 2014 “The Year of Empathy” in his annual listing of customer experience trends to watch.

“As companies increasingly focus on customer experience in 2014, they will recognize that their organizations lack a deep understanding and appreciation for their customers,” he said. “In 2014, we’ll hear more executives talking about the need to build ‘empathy’ for customers, making ‘empathy’ the customer experience word for 2014.”

And in a Dec. 30 post on his company’s Customer Experience Matters blog, Temkin predicted that as companies continue to focus more on customer experience in 2014, they will recognize that they “lack a deep understanding and appreciation for their customers.” Why? Because the internal focus on day-to-day operations is a stumbling block to gaining that understanding. He also predicted that we’d be hearing more executives talking about the need to build empathy.

At the recent Store Brands Decisions 2014 Innovation & Marketing Summit, one Safeway retail executive lent some credence to Temkin’s prediction. Michael Fox, vice president of marketing and innovation for Safeway Brands, told summit attendees that retailers must be “observers and problem-solvers” to drive store brand innovation and growth, which will require “empathy building” with shoppers. Too often, retailers spend more time solving their own problems than solving shopper problems, he added during his Feb. 26 keynote presentation.

To build empathy, Safeway relies on such things as intercepts, shop-alongs, and forums of “power users,” he noted. Meanwhile, analytics, trend scanning and work with research firms such as Mintel and Nielsen help in the understanding part of the process. And Safeway is starting to experiment with social mining, doing both quantitative and qualitative work to understand consumer needs states that drive demand. The retailer’s efforts here help drive differentiation in new product development on the store brands side — product development that truly “empathizes” with shoppers and addresses their need states.

But too many retailers still let the day-to-day internal grind get in the way of really getting to know their shoppers: a prerequisite for building empathy and delivering creative solutions that deliver on shoppers’ wants and needs. And change here can be difficult.

A best practices document that marketing firm Exact Market published in January — titled “What’s Going on in There? How to Use Empathy to Provide Superior Customer Care” — provides some pointers on the empathy-building front. The most important of them for retailers that operate store brand programs to keep in mind is “understand what matters to the customer, and make sure it matters to everyone.” Empathethic businesses understand what matters to their customers and incorporate those priorities into their daily practices.

Today, retailers have numerous avenues to gain that understanding. But the best opportunities — the ones that lead to true empathy — involve a personal approach instead of just data-mining. I’m talking about efforts such as shopper panels, in-store surveys, two-way conversations with social media followers, and more. Isn’t it time to walk a mile in your shoppers’ shoes? 

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