Empathy is a Crucial Component of Your Product
Features, processes, culture
It was a little over fifteen years ago, and I was on the phone with a customer. His email was down, and he was, to put it mildly, furious. He'd been trying to send an important document for hours, and something was just eating it. The email was gone, the attachment was gone, and his day was, in his words, "shot to hell."
My job was to fix it. My immediate, gut reaction was to get defensive. You know the feeling. You’re flushed, maybe a little embarrassed, but at the same time, motivated to fix the problem and get the guy off the phone. I wanted to explain all the technical reasons why it might be happening: a congested mail queue, a bad configuration file, a hard drive somewhere that was about to fail. But he didn't care about any of that. He just wanted his email to work.
He wasn't yelling, but his voice was tight with frustration. He said, "Look, I don't care about your servers or your queues. I just need to send this document. This is my business."
That's when it hit me. He wasn't mad at me. He was mad at a bunch of blinking lights and spinning disks that had failed him at a critical moment. He had trusted our technology, and it had betrayed him.
Instead of explaining why it was broken, I shifted gears. I said, "I hear you. That sounds incredibly frustrating, and I'm really sorry this is happening. Let's forget about the 'why' for a minute and focus on getting your document sent. Can you try sending it to me as an attachment right now? I'll see if I can force it through from my end and help you get back to your day."
After a brief moment of silence, I heard, "Yeah, I can do that."
We got the email through. The rest of the call was easy. We spent a few more minutes troubleshooting the issue so it wouldn't happen again. By the end of the call, he was calm, and I had learned one of the most important lessons of my career: empathy is a tool. It's not just a soft skill or a nice-to-have. It's a fundamental part of solving a problem. It's about seeing the person on the other side of the screen not as a problem to be solved, but as a partner in a shared struggle.
Empathy as a Product Feature
So how do we apply this? How do we build empathy into our work?
First, we can start by thinking of empathy as a product feature. Just as we would design a new button or a new workflow, we can design for empathy. This means thinking about the user's emotional state as they interact with our product. Are they frustrated? Are they confused? Are they delighted? We can use this information to build a better experience. For example, instead of a generic error message like "An error has occurred," we can provide a more helpful and empathetic message like "We're sorry, something went wrong. We've been notified and are working on a fix." We can even link to a status page (like the one at Statuspage) that can give them more information.
Second, we can build empathy into our processes. This means making sure that we are regularly talking to our users. Not just in a formal, "user interview" setting, but in a casual, "how's it going?" kind of way. This can be as simple as an informal "voice of the customer" channel in Teams or a rotating schedule for engineers to spend a few hours a week in a support queue. When we talk to our users, we can hear the frustration (and the joy) in their voices. And we can use that information to build a better product. When in internal meetings, leaving an empty chair for the “customer” can change the focus of your session.
Finally, we can build empathy into our culture. This means creating an environment where it's okay to talk about feelings, both our own and our users'. It means celebrating the wins (the "that was so easy!" emails) and learning from the losses (the "this is so frustrating!" calls). It means a culture where we are all in it together, trying to build something great for our users. You can plan for tactical and strategic solutions all day, but none of them will amount to anything if you don’t first listen.
It's a long road from that desk fifteen years ago to today. But the lesson I learned that day (and, to be honest, keep relearning) has stayed with me. It's a simple one, but it's powerful. The next time you're frustrated with a user, a coworker, or a piece of technology, remember that they're not angry at you. They're angry at the technology. And you can help.