Empathy often gets a bad rap as a soft skill in business. But if your goal is to provide excellent customer service, empathy isn’t just nice to have, it’s a differentiator. Whether a customer is calling about a billing issue, returning a product in your store, asking for help planning an event or navigating your firm’s complexities, their emotional state often shapes the entire interaction. An empathetic employee can diffuse frustration, build trust and turn a potentially negative experience into a meaningful connection.
For leaders across industries, hiring for empathy isn’t optional, it’s essential to service quality, brand reputation, customer loyalty and long-term success.
Yet empathy can be surprisingly difficult to identify in traditional hiring processes. Résumés don’t reflect it. Standard interviews often overlook it. And fast-paced service environments can unintentionally filter out candidates who excel at emotional connection but are less comfortable in high-volume, transactional settings.
The good news? Empathy can be identified, reliably and consistently, when you intentionally design your hiring approach.
Why empathy matters in every industry
No matter the setting, your employees are the face of your brand. Their ability to listen, understand and respond with care can:
•Reduce escalations and complaints
•Boost customer satisfaction and loyalty
•Improve first-contact issue resolution
•Strengthen brand trust
•Reduce employee burnout by fostering healthier interactions
Whether a customer is shopping for a gift, asking about a menu item, disputing a charge or troubleshooting a service issue, empathy is the skill that helps them feel not just served, but truly valued.
What to look for to hire for empathy
1. Behavioral indicators that signal empathy
Empathy reveals itself through observable behaviors, such as:
•Active listening
•Emotional curiosity (asking meaningful follow-up questions)
•Patience
•Warmth in tone and language
•Ability to take another’s perspective
•Composure during moments of stress
To surface these traits, shift from transactional interview questions to story-based, behavior-driven ones. Try asking: “Tell me about a time you helped someone who was upset or frustrated. What did you do?” or “How do you make sure someone feels heard during a difficult interaction?”
Look for candidates who naturally reflect on others’ perspectives and use emotional language in their stories.
2. Use talent assessments to identify natural tendencies
Tools like The Predictive Index can bring clarity and objectivity to your hiring strategy. While PI doesn’t measure empathy directly, it reveals behavioral patterns that influence empathetic communication.
For example:
•High collaboration: Warm, people-focused, team-oriented
•Low dominance: Supportive rather than controlling; helpful in diffusing tension
•Moderate to high patience: Able to stay calm during repetitive or emotionally charged interactions
•High formality: Thoughtful, careful communicat ors who choose their words intentionally
•Using PI alongside structured interviews reduces bias, increases consistency and surfaces candidates naturally wired for customer connection.
3. Use realistic scenarios and role playing
Scenario-based exercises are one of the strongest predictors of empathetic behavior. Consider situations such as:
•A guest frustrated about a long wait at a restaurant
•A retail customer returning an item without a receipt
•A client confused about a bill or service agreement
•A guest at a hotel experiencing a booking error
•During the simulation, watch for candidates who:
•Reflect emotions: “I can see why that would be frustrating.”
•Slow down instead of rushing
•Choose supportive, clear language
•Maintain calmness even when the customer is upset
•Balance empathy with practical guidance
These exercises reveal whether empathy comes naturally or only appears when prompted.
4. Hire for attitude, train for skill
You can train someone to use a script or follow a protocol. You cannot train someone to genuinely care. Hiring people with natural empathy:
•Lowers turnover
•Speeds up onboarding
•Improves service quality
•Creates healthier team cultures
•Skills can be developed. Empathy is a mindset.
Final thoughts and your next step
In any business, customers remember how your employees made them feel long after the transaction is over. Empathy is the human connector that transforms routine service into a memorable, loyalty-building experience.
If you’re ready to raise the bar on customer service, start by integrating behavioral assessments like The Predictive Index, redesign your interviews to surface emotional intelligence and incorporate empathy-based scenarios into your hiring process.
Want help building an empathy-driven hiring model for your organization? Let’s connect: I’d love to support you in crafting a customer experience that sets your business apart.
This article appears in February SBJ 2026.