Insurance giant Zurich UK has rolled out ‘empathy training’ to over 100 employees to deal with customers in vulnerable situations.
Developed in partnership with professional coaching experts, the training focuses on enhancing employees’ self-awareness and interpersonal skills. It teaches how to better understand behavioural cues and emotional nuances to glean whether customers need detailed explanations or “quick, high-level responses”.
Zurich said the training programme took more than 3,000 hours over six months to design and implement and was delivered during a two-day immersive training programme. During training, true life role-play scenarios were acted out in front of the teams to bring to life the different personality types.
The firm said it has seen customer satisfaction scores across its retail protection business surge following the training. More than nine in 10 (92%) customers scored their agents a nine or 10 out of 10 for helpfulness since the training.
Going forward, Zurich UK plans to roll out the training to all customer facing teams with over 21,000 employees.
Pete Sanderson, head of retail protection operations at Zurich UK, said: “There isn’t a one size fits all approach to helping our customers, but one key element of success is acting with empathy. When someone is making a claim, it’s most likely that they’re at their most vulnerable. It may have been they’ve just been diagnosed with a critical illness or even lost a loved one. We know this can be a stressful time, so it’s important that we’re there for them at their time of need, both emotionally and practically.
“Customers quite rightly expect a high level of customer service. We’re proud of how our empathy training is being received by customers and colleagues, and it’s great to see other teams within Zurich UK looking to implement it to deliver first class service to more of our customers.”
