By
Jessica Levco
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Date Published: November 18, 2025 - Last Updated November 18, 2025
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As AI takes over routine customer service interactions, contact center agents are facing the most complex, emotionally charged calls. The angry customers. The impossible problems. The situations where someone’s livelihood or safety hangs in the balance.
This means that empathy can be a skill that separates organizations that thrive from those that survive.
But here’s the problem: most companies are getting empathy training wrong, explained by the folk at
EI Empowered. “They treat empathy as a short “walk in your customers’ shoes” exercise tucked into an annual customer service course, a quick checkbox activity rather than a real, learnable skill. At EI Empowered, we teach that empathy is not about what you think but all about what the person you’re empathizing with expresses; it’s the curiosity and space you intentionally hold for others that allows understanding and trust to grow. And it’s just one of a broader emotional intelligence skill set that must be practiced, developed, and reinforced over time.”
That’s why
Sandra Thompson, the UK’s first Goleman Emotional Intelligence Coach, and
Michael Mattson, a customer experience leader, launched EI Empowered’s science-backed Unshakable Communicator Practicum, a 16-hour (over 8-weeks) development journey grounded in neuroscience, emotional intelligence, and real-world application. As Thompson explains, “It’s time for us all to un-learn what we thought about empathy and learn how to truly connect to others through emotionally intelligent communication”
How to Define Empathy
Mattson says that empathy has become too much of a buzzword.
“It has been used as a way of bucketing a lot of things that aren’t really empathy, so people don’t know how to apply it,” Mattson says. “But we teach that empathy is the curiosity and intentional space you hold for others — a practiced skill grounded in emotional intelligence. It’s less about imagining what someone feels and more about creating the conditions for them to feel understood.”
Thompson says that people aren’t taught empathy due to social conditioning.
“You’re not taught how to communicate, how to be vulnerable or how to be present,” Thompson says. “You’re taught that everything is a competition. Therefore, more credit and recognition goes to the ‘tough’ person, but it’s the quiet leader who actually can make phenomenal change happen.”
Who Should Take This Course?
The goal of this practicum is to reach the quiet leaders — the ones who aren’t getting promotions, feel overlooked or get talked over.
Even though Thompson says that most of us haven’t been taught how to practice empathy, it’s a trait that can be learned by everyone.
“Unlike traditional workshops that dump information and send people on their way, our program combines weekly self-paced learning with live practice sessions in small cohorts of six to eight professionals who become practice partners and accountability champions,” Thompson says.
Participants practice their skills with their cohort once a week for two hours, receive feedback and use smartwatch data to see the physiological evidence of their progress. This format creates a reinforcement loop that builds confidence.
5 Tips to Become an Empathetic Contact Center
If you want to create a more empathetic workforce, the duo shared these tips:
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Tell agents to actively listen. Test them to paraphrase and they will connect with their customer faster and de escalate the tensions customers feel faster, Thompson says.
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Don’t imagine what it’s like to be your customer. Agents should stop saying, “Oh, that must be really frustrating” or “Oh, the same thing happened to me” because for some people, that can aggravate them even more. Agents shouldn’t assume they understand what a customer is going through. They should seek to genuinely understand how the customer feels in their own words.
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Movement matters. Give agents time to take a break, stand up, walk around or take a breath.
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Encourage customers to take their time. Let’s say a customer is having trouble with a password. Tell the agent to say, “Take your time.” Sounds counterintuitive with a focus on AHT but it’s a way to get the customer to relax in a moment of panic or frustration.
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Don’t let AI take over everything. Yes, AI is everywhere, but now is the time to showcase the beauty of our humanity. “Humans make amazing things happen,” Thompson says. “We can be vulnerable and courageous. Give your agents the chance to be like that.”