User empathy helps put the customer at the very center of everything a business does, creating better products, memorable brands, and companies that last.
Empathy is the ability to step into users’ shoes, see a company product through their eyes, and share their feelings. It’s about living through the customer’s experience during the onboarding and day-to-day usage of the product and understanding what it feels like to be a customer of your business.
Sympathy vs. Empathy
There is a difference between being sympathetic and empathetic. When you are sympathetic, you intellectually acknowledge the customer’s feelings but keep yourself detached from them. For example, you understand that the registration process for your product is long and requires filling in a lot of information. You acknowledge some people might be frustrated by it. Empathy, on the other hand, allows you to share the cognitive experience a person has during this long and probably annoying registration process.Frameworks to Incorporate Empathy
User empathy is the best tool to read customers’ minds and hearts. You can embrace empathy by empowering internal initiatives, which motivate a team to listen to users and observe how they behave. Let’s discuss some of them.
By Lisa Dziuba
