Empathy in written communications with customers.

Abstract

Existing literature on the concept of empathy has mainly revolved around its definition and relation to the performance indicators of certain professions, such as sales and nursing. However, limited research has been conducted on empathy in written communications by organisations. This study adopts an exploratory approach, using secondary data such as existing literature, as well as organisational correspondences found in the Straits Times Forum. Guided by existing literature, we analysed the organisational correspondences in order to better understand the presence and use of empathy in such written communications. In the process, we discussed the main motivations for people to write in to organisations, which could also have motivated the forms of emphatic information decoded. Furthermore, it was determined that despite the use of empathy in general, organisations did not seem to pay much attention to matching the forms of empathy they displayed, to the forms of empathy which should be displayed in written responses to people who had written to them. Moreover, certain phenomena were observed. This includes the tendency for Government organisations to display no empathy and for Non-Government organisations to use only cognitive empathy. A possible relationship between these phenomena and the use of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) was also explored.BUSINES