The Empathy Paradox: Why Even Customer-Centric Marketers Fail at Understanding Customers
No one will ever say “we don't focus on the customer. Learn why (even empathetic) marketers fail at customer empathy and how to fix it immediately
nikhil
No one will ever say “we don’t focus on the customer.”
Here’s why (even empathetic) marketers fail at customer empathy and how to fix it.
Let me explain:
Dr. Johannes Huttula did a research with 480 experienced marketing managers.
They asked marketers to imagine themselves in their customers’ shoes and predict what they would reply to in a market test.
By the way, the scientists already knew what the customers would say because they had captured their preferences before the test.
Surprisingly, the more empathetic the marketers felt, the worse they did on predicting customer preferences and motivations. They utterly failed.
The reason marketers fail at empathy
According to Huttula, marketers use their biases and personal preferences (thinking it’s empathy) to predict what will appeal to customers.
I know, crazy right?
Huttula found that telling marketers about their biases helped the correct marketers’ course. Develop awareness about your preferences to help you step back and better apply customer empathy.
Why customer empathy is essential
Dr. Antonio Damasio said, we not thinking machines that feel rather, we’re feeling machines that think.
Damasio discovered that we make our decisions emotionally. His research showed that every decision we make is grounded in emotion. This is huge.
As marketers, we’re almost self-centered to a fault when we approach customers.
Today, we have more ways of reaching our customers, more channels, and more content than ever before. But connecting with our customers (really connecting with them and building trust) has never been harder.
That’s why I believe empathy is a superpower. It’s a superpower for sellers and marketers to connect—to understand another person’s feelings and experiences. If we can do that, we can relate.
In sum, our assumptions kill empathy. And we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
What you can do to fix the customer empathy gap
Here’s what I’ve found we can do to fix the customer empathy gap:
- Focus on building a connection before you focus on conversion.
- Consider your assumptions and biases before you do any more new marketing
- Ask yourself, is what you’re communicating really grounded in customer insights?
- Understand the core emotional motivators of your customers
- Design messages and experiences that resonate with these core emotional drivers
- Use agile testing to get actionable customer motivation insights
- Transfer customer insights to different channels and scale up results
Share your thoughts. What did I miss or what else would you add?
You may also like:
HBR: Putting Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes Doesn’t Work: An Interview with Johannes Hattula
How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline
