Last year, an executive I worked for told us that “customer empathy” is the “killer feature” of 2022. I appreciated the answer, but suspect it meant basically nothing to the product teams listening.
Another executive that year outlined the ”customer back” approach in their strategic placemat…whatever the hell that means.
Qualtrics XM Institute is calling 2023 “The Year of Empathy,” and there’s no end of articles, books, and other publications emphasizing how gosh-darn important it is to empathize with customers when designing digital products.
But after a decade of helping product teams, I gotta tell ya: what they actually need is compassion.
I follow psychologists and thought leaders who have devoted their lives to concepts like empathy and emotional intelligence, such as Susan David, Ph.D., and here’s a visual she recently shared to explain the differences between sympathy, empathy, and compassion:
While it initially caught my eye because it spoke to the topic of empathy, my first thought when I looked at the “Empathy” panel was, “wow, the hexagon sticking its hand out like that just makes it look like a dick.”
It struck me that it’s not until the hexagon takes action — moving the cloud away — that the two parties are better off.
It’s a little too easy to compare this to the way I have historically seen product teams operate.
What little customer feedback they do stumble across (or I force them to consider), they seem to understand. They may even be able to put themselves in their users’ shoes long enough to go, “Huh, I imagine what this pain might feel like.”
But then…nothing happens. The pain point I brought to their attention seems to go unaddressed, or gets added to a queue of backlogged work items SO LONG that by the time they actually get to it, we’ve aggravated hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of customers.
I do understand their side of things, too. Product teams have no shortage of improvements to make to whatever site, app, or digital feature they’re responsible for. They’re using multiple feedback channels to decide what they work on next, and the hard truth is that sometimes, we have to work on things that benefit the business or the internal site operations before we tackle the customer problems.
However, I’d like to challenge product teams to consider working on at least one initiative at any given time that’s a “compassion play” — something you’ve recognized as a customer pain point and decided to take action to correct.
Product leadership can also be a guiding hand here, by asking how each item on the roadmap is showing customer compassion, and by ensuring every team is working on at least one “compassion play” each quarter.
But what if you’re just a UX Researcher, and you have to rely on other teams to take action?
I’ll admit, I got a little sad when I first found Susan David’s infographic.
As a UX Researcher, it’s my job to make empathy happen; there’s designers, product managers, developers, and many others involved to actually move the figurative clouds. How am I supposed to take action and exhibit compassion in my own work?
I’ve been thinking about the answer to this question over the last week, and I think the best answer is:
I get loud.
For a long time, UX Research deliverables have been word documents or powerpoint decks. Those serve their purpose, but it’s far too easy for such artifacts to sit around collecting dust instead of doing the important job of acheiving empathy.
So I build deliverables directly into Miro or Figma or wherever else my stakeholders are looking most often, so they can’t help but see the research findings coming in.
I make an effort to share at least one user video clip every week with our broader product org. It’s usually under two minutes, and highlights a pain point or a digital interaction that doesn’t quite meet expectations. I remind the team that full sessions are available, and I’m always willing to connect them to more info if they’re curious to hear more.
After a month, after 3 months, sometimes even after a year, I shoot an email to stakeholders asking them, “Hey, whatever happened here? Did we ever do anything about that guy who got completely stuck…?”
I work with designers, portfolio managers, and strategy teams to encourage them to advocate for UX Research when new initiatives hit the roadmap, to make sure customers’ voices are considered and the teams have the opportunity to walk around in the users’ shoes for a while.
By being loud about research, I’m showing compassion to our users and (hopefully) inspiring compassion among the product teams I support. It’s not much, but it’s how I try to chase the clouds away.
Since 2019, I’ve focused a fair bit of energy on customer emotions and empathy within UX and product teams. It’s hard for me to realize that the scope of my focus has been so narrow, and that I need to broaden my lens a bit.
However, it’s fun to dream about the next few years. In my head, I wonder if 2024 (or 2030, or…whenever) might be dubbed “the year of compassion”.
I wonder if we start to hear terms like “compassionate design” or “compassionate experiences”.
I wonder if the next generation of NPS asks something like “Rate your level of agreement with the following statement: ‘This company treats me with compassion.’”
It’s probably a ridiculous ask, but it’d be one way to know that empathy finally turned into action.
