Empathy Goes A Long Way and Lack Thereof Can Be Devastating: Thoughts from DPHA Fellow Tom Cohn

Many moons ago, we renovated our master bath not necessarily out of a desire to improve the aesthetic or functionality, but more so out of necessity. The contractor who installed the original bathroom placed basic wallboard instead of a material that was waterproof in the shower stall and throughout the entire bath. Tiles were falling off the wall and water was leaking into the living room below. We took advantage of our misfortune to create or ideal bathroom (a big assist to the Goldberg family). We removed a jetted tub that could sleep four with a multifunctional dual shower that has 11 showerheads. We hired a local contractor with good references for the install. He did not do a good job. The shower leaked from day one. Long story short, it took us three demolitions to finally have a shower that did not leak, and the last contractor who saved our day is one of the largest remodelers not only in our service territory, but in the entire country.

We encountered a new problem a few weeks ago. The glass panel that is connected to the shower door was pulling away from the wall and we feared that our frameless enclosure could collapse. I reached out to the owner of the remodeling company, who referred me to a project manager that would help us. When I called the project manager to express the urgency of our concern, I was greeted with this statement: “Your warranty has expired.” What? I was taken back that the representative of a company with a stellar reputation who spends hundreds of thousands of dollars annually advertising and promoting its quality and trustworthiness was only concerned about who would pay for the fix. There was no interest in helping a former client who had a problem. There was no offer to help. There was no empathy. And this lack of empathy reminded me of what is considered one of the great moments in campaign history (if you did not know, I live in Washington, DC where campaigning is a major industry). In 1992 during a town hall, then candidate Bill Clinton was asked by an activist to take a stand and offer his position on the AIDS epidemic. Instead of reciting a policy position, Clinton walked from behind his podium and approached the activist saying, “I feel your pain.” That response is credited as a major reason Clinton defeated Bush and Ross Perot in 1992. It showed that Clinton was a human being and a great politician.

That’s the lesson of my recent less-than-stellar customer service experience. When a client or former customer calls with a problem, teach your customer service team, designers, sales professionals, bookkeepers and everyone else on your team to take a step back and understand that this person has a problem and they are calling you for help. Your customer does not care who was responsible or whether or not a warranty has expired. Their primary concern is the fix. Approaching problems with empathy and feeling your customers’ pain will go a long way toward determining who will rightfully pay for the solution without argument and whether or not you can take advantage of an opportunity to create a raving fan.