2022: a new year for everyone. The past couple of years has been nothing short of a dumpster fire with the pandemic raging throughout the world, leaving some people scared to leave their house. Gone are the days of hoarding toilet paper in the fear that nothing will be available as we face the world. Something you can do as a business is making your plan centered around empathy for your customers. Today we’re going to be looking at some ways you can accomplish that.

Make empathy for the customer the central value of the company

Something that can really help with your business is realizing that customers are shopping differently now since the pandemic, and your job as a business is to tap into the feelings of it: how exactly and why are they shopping differently? As a business, it’s important to shed your old ways of thinking about how your business was structured and adopt better practices based on how you see your customers go about their day. Not necessarily a customer is always right movement, but it’s being able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and feel their feelings, and that goes for everyone in every department, not just the people on the floor. Making decisions with your heart is just as important as your head these days.

The human experience is just as important as data

Trying to build a connection with your customers to understand their psyche better can only benefit you. As customers shop online more and more often, it’s important that we don’t downplay collecting information based on the human experience rather than just data – clicks, sales conversion statistics, email response rates, survey responses. Feelings provide the “why” someone does something, not the data. Observing and interacting with customers whenever possible is incredibly important. Putting the two together shows the importance of every aspect of your business, whether that be product design, creation, or support.

These are just some of the ways that you can incorporate an empathetic customer experience into your business plan. Doing either of these will only make your business stronger in every way.

Erik Halvorsen is the Chief Business & Strategy Officer at FAR Biotech. As a result of his industry experience, Erik is an often sought-after public speaker, and he has served as an advisor to various hospitals and start-ups. He is constantly looking for new ways to improve patients’ lives while changing the broader healthcare industry for the better. He has been referred to as a “translator,” in that he has the ability to speak science with businesspeople and speak business with science people.