In the customer support industry, a foundational business strategy is to create the illusion of proximity between agents and the customers they serve. Providers in this sector guarantee a level of human availability that, as they say, follows the sun. During COVID, this illusion of proximity fell away when support workers, displaced from contact center production floors, began answering calls from home. And while knowledge workers enjoyed the privilege of building virtual camaraderie with their fellow work-at-homers, support agents often experienced the opposite. Sounds of life (animals, children, street noise) leaked through the phone. These signals of distance and “foreignness” could provoke irritation, even ire, from customers. This PechaKucha posits an opportunity for our work as ethnographers to generate a new norm where homogeneity is not a condition for empathy. Too often, in the current state, neither agents nor customers are satisfied. Might we, as ethnographers, work to embed empathy into corporate policies in a way that truly embraces diversity? And, in the case of contact centers, is there a way we can generate empathy to encourage reciprocity so that both parties – the agent and the customer – achieve their goals of seeing and feeling seen?
A cultural anthropologist, Nicole Laborde brings over 20 years of research experience in international and domestic settings, often among vulnerable populations and on uncomfortable topics. She sees ethnography, empathy and storytelling as central to her work, and has a talent for respectfully eliciting stories and making meaning out of experiences. Out of the office, she loves thrift shopping with her daughters, practices karate, and cares for too many pets.
Marise Phillips leads the service design practice at Sutherland. Her experience in participatory design facilitation empowers cross functional teams to co-create empathy maps, ecosystems, journey maps and experience blueprints. At Wells Fargo, she managed the customer insights team shaping digital banking experiences whilst helping the bank become a more agile organization. In her spare time, she leads ethnographic initiatives to promote ecosystem restoration in the San Francisco Bay.
Jamie Taylor brings his passion for storytelling and visual communication into his work as a service designer. Before joining Sutherland Jamie tried his hand at many professions; freelance design, running a ski business, owning a print shop, working at a brewery, and taxi driving –just to name a few! During his spare time Jamie loves to adventure, his interests include rock climbing, hiking, and spending time in the garden with his wife and two daughters.
