About the Book
A bold new look at how technology can become a force multiplier to deliver more empathy and integrate deeper, more personalized human connections into everyday business interactions at scale.
While the world has never needed more empathy than today, too often technology is used by businesses as a substitute and a barrier to real human connection. We’ve all experienced dumb chatbots, automated scripts and poor employee interactions that dehumanizes customer interactions.
That’s because brands have focused on company centric business strategies, processes and technology.
However, simply put: No customers, no business. What if, by transforming the old company-centric way of doing business and putting customers and employees front and center, businesses could succeed faster than ever before and not at the expense of their most important assets—the very people who make it possible to be in business?
Empathy is a powerful construct for a better world and a better business. It’s not a synonym for nice. Empathy is about respect and treating people in the context of their unique situation in a highly personalized way.
In this groundbreaking new book, longtime technology leader and current CEO of Genesys, Tony Bates teams up with researcher and customer experience evangelist, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff to define a new path forward to put empathy into action.
By using strategies and technologies as the flywheel to orchestrate systems of listening, understanding and predicting, as well as, taking action and learning from those interactions at scale, businesses can easily put the customer and employee first, not only meet the ever-changing customer and employee expectations, but also leapfrog their competition.
They predict empathy is the next frontier in technology. This book is aimed at sparking an industry-wide conversation about how exponential technologies like, AI and cloud can enable a more empathetic world.
About the Author :
AUTHOR BIO - About Tony Bates
Tony Bates has led multiple billion dollar companies with a simple ethos of “know your customers”. Tony Bates, CEO of Genesys, leads the company’s strategy, direction and operations in more than 100 countries, overseeing a global team of more than 5,000 employees. With decades of experience steering B2B and B2C companies through major market transitions and rapid scaling, he is a passionate technologist at heart. Beginning his career in network operations and internet infrastructure, Tony taught himself to code on his daily train commute. Swiftly gaining the business acumen, he advanced into trusted executive roles at some of the world’s most respected global SaaS companies. Tony led Cisco’s Service Provider business and then grew its Enterprise and Commercial division to over $20B in annual revenue and he served as Skype’s CEO, expanding the business to over 170M connected users. When Microsoft acquired Skype Tony, as president, was responsible for unified communications and then served as EVP of business development and developers. In addition, Tony is on the board of directors at VMWare and eBay.
AUTHOR BIO - About Dr. Natalie Petouhoff
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff joined Genesys after years of being a strategic executive advisor and leading Industry Analyst at Forrester and Constellation, CX VP at Salesforce, a PWC strategic management consultant, Chief Digital/Social Officer and ROI expert at Weber Shandwick, a digital transformation lecturer at UCLA, with humble beginnings as a product engineer at General Motors and Hughes Electrics. Her experience in many different aspects of the corporate world has given her practical wisdom to use technology to scale excellence and engage all levels of employees in transforming corporate
Review :
"A book with the credibility and experience to start a broader business conversation about delivering better customer experiences through empathy." John Chambers - Chairman Emeritus, Cisco and CEO JC2 Ventures
"Whether you are a start-up or an intraprepreneur inside a company, this book is your key to become obsessed with your customer and your employees. The author's four empathy pillars - listen, understand + predict, act and learn are the key to what drives innovation and disruption. I can't wait for my students and clients to dive into this book."
Jan Ryan - Professor and Exec Director of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at University of Texas & Partner at Capital Factory, Inc
"Bates and Petouhoff examine why customer experiences have fallen short in the past and spark your imagination about a new world of superior, empathetic customer experiences."
John Donahoe - President and CEO, Nike
"Experience" happens when leaders guide their organization to behaviors and habits that earn admiration and sustainable growth. Use this book as a practical guidebook to achieve these outcomes."
Jeanne Bliss - Best-selling author of Chief Customer Officer
"Filled with new perspectives on the power of empathy in anticipating and delivering on customer expectations, I recommend this valuable book for anyone looking to innovate customer experience."
Shantanu Narayen - Chairman, President & CEO, Adobe Inc.
"Empathy in Action provides tremendous insight into the opportunity for leaders to blend empathy and experiences in a way that leads to better business outcomes."
Pat Gelsinger - CEO, Intel
"Empathy in Action delivers a systematic, intentional approach to transform your organization. Keep this book close by because you'll be referencing it frequently!"
Charlene Li - New York Times bestselling author of The Disruption Mindset and Founder of Altimeter
"If you care about your customer and employees, I recommend Empathy in Action for your whole organization. It's a guide for reexamining our approaches to customer and employee experience that has the potential for those daring enough to shift paradigms to transform business as we know it."
Sandy Carter - VP, AWS WWPS Partners and Programs
"This book explores how it all starts with employee satisfaction - which directly correlates with customer satisfaction. If companies want to stay relevant in this new world - these dynamics must be explored and implemented."
Andrea Chin - Executive Director Global Consumer Care - IT at The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
"All roads in business, service and relationships lead back to respect. Our success is contingent not only on our ability to solicit loyalty, but to deliver an experience that show that we are listening; we care. Empathy is personalizing respect, and this book sets the tone for our changing world, and expectations of our employees and customers. Empathy In Action explains a bold shift towards relying more heavily on prosocial innovation."
Odessa Jenkins - President, Emtrain
"For a decade or more, we have been talking about customer-centrism, and customer experience. Last year, during the pandemic, we began to hear about the importance of business empathy in realizing a great customer experience. But very little had been done about what that actually means when it's put into action. But now industry dynamo Natalie Petouhoff who is currently the Chief Empathy Officer at Genesys and the Genesys CEO, Tony Bates, take empathy and give it substance. Not only do they help define how to see and feel the shoes the customer is in, but also what it takes to walk in those shoes. If you want to truly understand, what empathy means in business, how to apply it and how to measure how successful you have been, then this is a must have book. So, if you feel anything for your customers, order this book and start reading it, even if you are still in your own shoes when you do. Because, trust me, by the time you are done, you will be living the book's title - "Empathy in Action."
Paul Greenberg - Best-selling author CRM at the Speed of Light (4 Editions)
"In an age where almost every interaction we have is through a lens of technology, too many nameless faceless corporations have set aside the human connection for the bottom-line efficiency of technology. The secret to loyal customers isn't in technology or efficiency, it is in creating that empathetic connection at scale. In this amazing book Empathy in Action, Tony has laid out a road map for leaders to lead from the front and reestablish that critical empathetic human touch. A must have for any leader's library."
Alan Webber - Program VP, Customer Experience Strategies | IDC.com
"Empathy as a leverage tool toward employees and customers loyalty, and company growth. --Empathy in Action closes the gap between theory and what occurs to your customers and employee experience when you add Empathy to the formula. Unlike many other books expressing the author's ''opinion'', you have a book based on facts, outstanding research, exceptional proofed results, and great ideas that will help your company evolve. We are still far from closing all experience blind spots, but this book will certainly bring you many steps closer. I highly recommend this book if you want to insert Empathy in your organization effectively! A practical reading that will assist your organization to gain real market differentiation and advantage."
Ricardo Slatz Gulko - Co-Founder of European Customer Experience Organization
"Few people are as qualified to dissect and discuss the important of empathy in business and culture as Dr. Natalie Petouhoff. Her deep expertise in understanding the wants, needs and psychology of both customers and employees gives her unique insights into how better understanding leads to better business results. Empathy In Action will no doubt be a must read for business leaders, the C-Suite and even the "E-suite"—those seeking to obtain deeper levels of empathy, to better serve customers, employees and citizens."
David Armano, Founder - Armano Design Group, Forbes Contributor, Former Edelman Executive
"Companies are missing the massive opportunity to transform their transactional relationships with customers into bonds that are formed and informed by their experiences. In all my research and writing, it is clear that businesses with a traditional approach to customer service have only a matter of time before they're replaced by a vendor that truly understands and wants to help their customer. This book offers readers the rationale behind adopting a customer-centric business model and the unexpected blind spots to avoid."
Adrian Swinscoe - advisor, best-selling author and Forbes contributor
