Customer Service Pyramid
Our customer service pyramid is an innovative, effective, yet simple model of delivering excellent customer service.
It’s the product of 18 years of my academic and professional research and practice!
The foundation of exceptional customer service is effective communication — both with your customers and your team members. Throughout their journey, customers constantly interact with your customer service teams and your frontline staff. They communicate with your employees in person, by email or text, using smartphone apps and online chats, or by contacting your call center.
Effective empathy is the ability to fully and accurately understand your customer’s experience — so that you can better address their challenges and needs and, in turn, provide exceptional service. Empathy improves communication and relationships with your customers while building lasting trust.
Each customer expects respect and appreciation from your business. They want to build a balanced and trusting relationship with your team — so that they can work with you to address their needs successfully.
Language is a tool that is both easy to use and effective but often overlooked in customer service. Individual-first language serves multiple purposes:
Helps your customers understand what you write or say the first time they read or hear it
Evokes positive emotions
Facilitates problem-solving and collaboration with your customers
Describes each customer as a unique and valued individual
Conveys respect, appreciation, understanding, and compassion
Empathy is not an easy task!
Empathy is the ability to understand the way your customers experience and perceive the world. It’s not an easy task! Each and every customer is a unique individual. As humans, we are complex and nuanced.
Our brains are wired differently. We have different talents, strengths, and challenges. We develop different skill sets, acquire different knowledge, and go through different experiences. We choose different paths in life.
Each of us lives in and is shaped by multiple cultures. Our family, circle of friends, neighborhood, faith community, profession, and workplace — each of these groups has its own distinct culture. We also build new cultures when we start our own families, friend groups, and communities.
Our training programs will help your frontline staff understand your customers and their needs on an individual level. The field of empathy has been growing substantially over the last decade. We’ve been at the forefront of both its research and practice.
Ensure clear, respectful, and empathetic communication with each and every customer!
Customers with disabilities
With both visible and invisible health conditions
Neurodivergent customers
With traits of autism, ADHD, and dyslexia
Older adults
Aged 60 and above
Customers who are in crisis
Experiencing stress or anxiety (e.g., during medical emergencies or neighbor disputes)
Multicultural customers
Across family and community cultures
Customers who don’t speak English fluently
Limited English and Non-English Proficient
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![Illustration of a brain and Earth with exchanging arrows between them, and text about empathy and understanding neurodivergent customers.]()
Serving Neurodivergent Customers
Check out my peer-reviewed article in Listening in Education and Training
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![Infographic titled "What is Empathy?" with four illustrated points: connecting through emotions, imagining yourself in others' shoes, learning about differences, and listening to understand.]()
What is Empathy?
Connect, Imagine, Learn, Listen, and Understand.
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![Colorful silhouettes of people with speech and thought bubbles above them.]()
What is Individual-First Language?
How to Effectively Communicate with Each and Every Customer.
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![Beata holding a light purple calculator with large buttons.]()
Your Customers Are Neurodiverse!
Businesses May Be Overlooking the Needs of 30% of Their Customers.
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![A four-image collage of Beata in an orange shirt making various gestures and expressions.]()
Facial Expressions and Gestures
Do They Boost Empathy or Contribute to Misunderstandings?
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![A person holding an umbrella over another person sitting.]()
Helping and Serving Others
From Empathy through Compassion to Altruism.
