Is Empathy the Missing Metric in Your CX Strategy?

Empathy is too often considered a nice-to-have “soft” skill when hiring and training customer service professionals. But when your agents pick up the phone or join a chat, it’s because something has gone wrong for a customer. Offering them empathy rather than just facts is increasingly seen as a strategic advantage.

Perhaps a customer has piled up high credit card balances and debt collectors are knocking. They can’t decipher if yesterday’s fender bender is covered by their auto insurance policy. Or they’re bewildered by the codes and medical terminology on a hospital bill.

Such calls for help can be quite urgent. They happen when customers may be confused, vulnerable or facing life-changing financial or health decisions.

Your team’s job isn’t just to recite a canned script or to hurriedly transfer the call to another department. Customers need to feel both heard and—most importantly—understood. Your agents need to be compassionate enough to put themselves in customers’ shoes and genuinely commiserate with the suffering when an air conditioning malfunctions in a 103-degree heat wave, or when a final cutoff date for a late utility bill is rapidly approaching.

This article explores why empathy is non-negotiable when customers in emotionally high-stakes situations contact your team.

Why Offering Empathy Matters

By offering empathy, your customer service team throws distressed customers a lifeline. But it also improves your ROI. You can boost net promoter scores (NPSs), grow customer loyalty, and increase customer lifetime value by making human compassion a cornerstone of your customer experience strategy.

Indeed, rapport built through empathy increases customers’ willingness to keep buying from you, recommend your business to others, and trust you enough to remain steadfastly loyal in the face of competitors’ efforts to entice them away.

A case in point: In the peer-reviewed paper, “The role of empathy in providers' online customer complaints management (2025),” research concluded that empathy can make potential customers perceive businesses as more competent and keeps them coming back to purchase even more.

Indeed, empathy is the cornerstone of a great customer experiences, according to a landmark research study. Happily, brands are catching on. After four straight years of documenting CX decline, Forrester’s 2026 Customer Service Index saw a relatively small but critical increase in overall global CX quality. Improvements in the three main contributors to CX—effectiveness, ease and emotion—were especially encouraging.

In 2026, performance improved each of these, with the largest increase in the emotional aspect, which rose 1.4% year after year. Why is this significant? Because emotion can be the strongest indicator that customers will remain loyal, and has also proven to be the most challenging to improve, says Forrester.

And, don’t forget, despite the fact that CX quality seems to be finally digging itself out of the hole it’s been in, many companies still apparently don’t get it, but continue to depend on canned scripts that by definition won’t help you achieve superior CX.

Related Article: Empathy at Scale: How Human-Centered AI Turns CX Into a Growth Engine

Why Does Empathy Improve Customer Loyalty and ROI?

Empathetic service increases willingness to keep buying, refer others and stay loyal under competitive pressure. Forrester's 2026 Customer Service Index found the emotional dimension of CX rose the most of any quality driver year over year — and it's historically the hardest one to move.

When Empathy Is Most Needed

Editor's note: The following highlights the most important lessons, actions and strategic considerations emerging from where empathy matters most across high-stakes customer service industries.

Where Empathy Carries the Most Weight, Industry by Industry

Financial Services

Financial worries are consumers' most onerous burdens. Customers can be anxious, embarrassed, or afraid, and face fines, penalties, and even legal issues if they make the wrong decisions or fail to act quickly. Money touches nearly every aspect of a customer's life — their sense of security, family obligations, even self-image. Many customers also put off reaching out until their situations are already quite dire, burdened by urgency infused with shame or self-blame that impedes their ability to think clearly.

A single call for help can carry far more emotional weight than the actual dollar amount at stake might suggest, and the choices customers make at these times can affect their financial stability for years to come. Agents who take the time to explain options clearly with empathy—and without judgment—help customers make calmer, more confident and ultimately better decisions.

Healthcare

Patients may be frightened, in pain, or dependent on others to make what can be life-or-death decisions. Confusing paperwork, medical jargon and administrative interactions (appointments, billing, insurance fine print) add another layer of stress. These administrative frictions can be as stressful as hearing a diagnosis or undergoing medical procedures.

Travel and Hospitality

Delays and cancellations are extraordinarily stressful when customers find itineraries changed without notice or misplace important documents while on the road. Customers are already out of their comfort zones in strange cities or countries, sometimes not speaking the local language, which raises the stakes of every interaction. Extra-compassionate help is the standard here, not the exception.

Utilities and Home Repairs

Service interruptions can cut off basic necessities like power, heat, or water. Essential household equipment or appliances, when out of commission, can seriously disrupt customers' lives. In such high-stress situations, clear information—including reasonably accurate time-to-resolution and cost estimates—may not be clearly communicated, causing customer confusion, dissatisfaction and even anger toward service providers or manufacturers.

What Do Your Customers Really Want?

Of course, they want their questions answered, and their problems—whatever they are—quickly solved. That’s a given. But let’s break down some more particular aspects of relief they may seek from your customer service team.

Resolve Extremely Urgent Issues (Perhaps Even Catastrophic, Life-and-Death Ones) ASAP

Empathy starts with engaged, active listening by your agents. Feeling listened to makes it easier for agitated customers to slow down and communicate their problems precisely. This helps customers considerably in time-sensitive situations like waiting on a busy highway for roadside assistance after a crash, or rushing to the ER with an injury. After listening comes the empathy: your agents then need to show they’ve listened, heard—and, most importantly—care.

Empathy also builds trust. Customers are more comfortable talking about sensitive or embarrassing aspects of their situations—perhaps why they made that unsafe driving maneuverer, or why they weren’t wearing a bicycle helmet. Interestingly, independent research has found that customers remember service experiences not only by whether their issue was resolved, but by how they were treated when they sought help. Empathy, compassion, and respect are more likely to be recalled than the actual outcome. People especially take notice of these “soft” qualities when helped at times they are particularly vulnerable.

Related Article: If Your Experience Falters, Customer Loyalty Follows — Fast

Help Making Potentially Risky, High-Cost or High-Impact Decisions

Being put on the spot to make a major decision can cause customers to be overly cautious or fearful due to financial or emotional risks. Empathy can calm these fears. Customers under stress often struggle to process information. By being empathetic rather than simply reciting facts, your agents can calm customers and get them to consider their options more rationally. Whether they need to go forward with a medical procedure, or what to do when a critical device in a factory environment crashes, empathy helps customers keep their cool and allows them to make better decisions.

Be Emotionally Validated or Reassured as Much as Resolving Issues

Customers often seek reassurance rather than just advice, specifications, facts or even results. Compassionate agents who genuinely seem to understand a customer’s situation allow even difficult or distressing discussions and to de-escalate complaints and potential conflicts before they get serious. In many cases, feeling validated that their concerns are valid and reassured that they will be fairly taken care of, will dampen or even eliminate customers’ anger or animosity. Customers who are treated with empathy are also less likely to publicize their complaints on social media or take legal action, as they are more likely to be convinced that an organization is taking responsibility.

A significant body of research backs this up. Scientists evaluated four customer service strategies to judge which was better for achieving positive customer reviews: blame-shifting, promising action, apologizing and a combination of empathy, apology and promised action. Not surprisingly, empathetic responses were more effective than defensive ones. And combining empathy, apology and promises to take action was by far the most effective strategy.

And Never, Ever, Forget the Human Element

According to PwC, 29% of consumers stopped buying from a company because of a poor customer experience. As technology enters the customer service workflow, it’s important to consider the difference that connecting with a human can mean for a customer.

One research study that surveyed consumers in “anxious” industries such as finance healthcare, and education, found that opportunities to interact with a human dramatically increased customers’ positive responses. In the financial industry, 24% more customers followed through on successful loan applications when invited to speak with a live loan agent.

My company knows that distress about a product or service doesn't keep business hours. That's why consumers can reach a real person every day of the year, with 24/7 chat staffed by people—not chatbots.

In our particular case, we understand that when someone finally asks for help with managing overwhelming debt, the last thing they need is another automated phone tree. Ninety-six percent of our callers reach a live person within two minutes.

We value empathy in employee candidates to join our customer service team. And we believe in empathy training. In 2025 alone, client success team members completed more than 10,000 collective hours of training focused on empathy, listening and action planning.

But infusing empathy into customer service isn't limited to the financial industry. It’s required by any organization that understands how customers’ emotional states are key considerations in their overall experiences with the brand.

Most critically, empathy delivers the highest business value when offered at times that customers are emotionally vulnerable. Whenever customers feel powerless, confused, or disappointed, empathy will become an especially critical competitive differentiator for your organization.

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