The power of empathy: How can we understand our customers if we don’t understand our teams?
Editor's note: This article is an automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Every human needs to have a sense of belonging to truly feel happy. This is true in the workplace.
However, the Havard Business Research reported that only 47% of senior leaders believe their companies are effectively practicing empathy.
Suzanne Martin and Clare Woodward, both insight managers at BT Group, discussed the importance of empathy within our teams during the 2025 Quirk’s Event – Virtual Global. The two argued that without empathizing with your team, its harder to empathize with your customers.
Session transcript
Marlen Ramirez
Hi everyone and welcome to our session, “The power of empathy: How can we understand our customers if we don’t understand our teams?” I’m Quirk’s News and Content Editor, Marlen Ramirez.
Before we get started, let’s quickly go over the ways you can participate in today's discussion. You can use the chat tab to interact with other attendees during the session, and you can use the Q&A tab to submit questions for the presenters during the session.
Our session is presented to you by BT Group. Enjoy the presentation!
Suzanne Martin
Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm Suzanne.
Clare Woodward
And I'm Claire.
Suzanne Martin
We both work for BT, a telecoms company based in the U.K.
Clare Woodward
And we're here today to talk about empathy, and while it's vital to build it amongst our teams, as well as consider it with our stakeholders and customers.
Suzanne Martin
So, we want to start today with a question. Why are you here?
Clare Woodward
Why did you choose to watch this session?
Suzanne Martin
Is it because you care about people and the way that we work as well as what we do?
Clare Woodward
Now, this'll be a good test to see how global the Care Bears were.
But we're here because we care, and we know conferences are often full of project overviews and tech updates, but we want to talk about people, because we're fundamentally a people-centered industry.
Suzanne Martin
So today, we're going to talk to you about why we believe empathy is so important to building successful insight teams, and how it makes us better at what we do.
Clare Woodward
We're going to talk to you a bit about why storytelling is an intrinsically human activity.
Suzanne Martin
We'll present the evidence as to why empathy is important, and it might just make your teams better.
Clare Woodward
And we'll take you through some of the things we've been doing to build this within the insight team at BT.
Suzanne Martin
So, what do these images have in common?
Well, there are all ways in which we pass along stories.
Now, we're not here today to tell you how to tell good insight stories, or even why storytelling is important for insight teams, because you probably already know that. And there's whole conferences available on the subject.
Clare Woodward
The ability to tell and understand stories is one of the things that sets humanity apart from other mammals.
Stories have been used throughout history, not just to entertain, but to pass along traditions and share information, to describe and assign value to things and to build bonds between individuals and create communities.
They've also been used to spread ideas and ideals and create order and social norms.
Suzanne Martin
And the basic skill of storytelling evolves as we grow. It's essential in how we form relationships and an understanding of one another.
Stories are powerful, and storytelling isn't simply a narrative. It's an opportunity to communicate emotions, values, desires, and fears in a way that is resonant and memorable.
And good stories allow the listener to position themselves within it, to see their relevance, and play forward a narrative about their role in the story. Good personal stories help to build empathy and encourage understanding at a human level.
Clare Woodward
Take a focus group.
It's crucial for us to build connection with our respondents, and for them to bond as a group. And how do we do that?
Well, we ask them to share something personal about themselves.
Suzanne Martin
And who doesn't love an icebreaker?
Well, personally, I don't love them, but this opening question allows individuals to share aspects of their personal lives and establish a sense of familiarity with one another.
Research participants, like members of the team, bond over similarities, sharing stories of experience, backgrounds, and perspectives.
Clare Woodward
The power of storytelling lies in its ability to highlight commonalities and create an emotional connection, making individuals feel seen, heard and understood.
But how can we take it a step further? And what are the missing stories? The ones about the individuals within the teams? The ones about us as people?
Suzanne Martin
Anyone can tell a story. We use them all the time in insight to create connection and impact, but how do we make them really stick?
Clare Woodward
Stories with data are great, but when we add care and emotion, that's when things start to have more impact.
And if you can make your stakeholders empathize with your customers, the insight you're delivering will stay with them long past the debrief.
Suzanne Martin
Because as all good storytellers know, and this quote from the director of cult classic “The Shining” conveys, it's how we make audiences feel that is important.
Empathy is a fundamental part of being good researchers. Empathy for our customers and the people we serve, caring about driving change or innovation that improves people's lives. Empathy about representing people accurately and caring about the truth.
Clare Woodward
In research, empathy goes beyond simply gathering data. It involves a genuine interest in understanding the needs, concerns and aspirations of participants.
Suzanne Martin
One way at BT, which we seek to build customer empathy alongside more traditional insight is through customer closeness sessions. Allowing the leadership and their teams to really get closer to and immerse themselves with customers' lives.
One of the main roles of these sessions is to bring these two groups together in one place to hear each other's stories.
Our stakeholders leave with a much better sense of the impact of the business decisions they make, and how it affects customers as humans.
Time and time again, we hear from them that it challenges their assumptions, and we're creating customer intuition as well as empathy.
Clare Woodward
You may have seen the MRS paper on recruiting world-class insight teams.
Empathy plays a crucial part in the skills and competencies identified for relationship building and stakeholder management.
The paper makes specific callouts to develop empathy to understand stakeholders' perspectives, motivations and emotions. And to demonstrate emotional intelligence in navigating sensitive situations and managing conflict constructively. As well as cultivating a supportive and inclusive work environment that encourages diverse viewpoints.
Suzanne Martin
In the U.K., Aura is a membership organization for client-side professionals. They have developed the “Working Well Together Charter,” which was designed to bring a closer understanding between client-side teams and their suppliers and agencies.
The Charter itself is a declaration of mutual respect and empathy. It was co-created with Aura members and some of their agency partners, which started with the sharing of experiences.
Clare Woodward
But what happens when we look internally within our own teams?
Suzanne Martin
Well, in most organizations, there's an empathy gap.
Harvard Business Research analyzed factors that contribute to top-performing companies. And found that 7% of these companies, the top 7% of these companies, were more likely to say that empathy is emphasized in their organizational culture.
Clare Woodward
But while 78% of senior leaders acknowledge the importance of empathy, only 47% believe their companies are effectively practicing it.
And if we're encouraging our stakeholders to get in the shoes of their customers, to understand their needs and to build empathy, why don't we do this with our colleagues and the teams we work in?
And if we don't share our experiences and values, and understand our team's experiences and values, how can anyone truly feel like they belong?
Belonging isn't a luxury, it's a necessity for us to thrive in our teams.
Suzanne Martin
Now, it wouldn't be an insight themed talk without us demonstrating some return on investment. So, here's the evidence that belonging isn't just a ‘nice-to-have.’ It brings commercial benefits as well.
Research has found that high belonging is linked to an increase in job performance, a reduction in staff turnover and sick days.
So, for a 10,000-employee company, that equates to an estimated annual saving of more than $52 million.
Clare Woodward
But consider this.
This quote comes from an article from the U.K. paper, The Guardian, which also stated that 42% of people don't have a close friend at work. That's despite the fact that you're almost as likely to have daily contact with your colleagues as you are with your children.
Suzanne Martin
Now, we're not suggesting for a minute that everyone needs or wants to have a close friend at work. And of course for this example, it might be the impact of a 50-hour week.
But the reason we're showing this is because the point is, if we're not building emotional connections with the people that we work with most directly, our teams, then how can we ever feel we truly belong?
Clare Woodward
So, practicing empathy and care makes us not only better colleagues and leaders, it makes us better insight professionals and partners.
But how do we build this within our own teams, whether we're agency or client-side?
Suzanne Martin
At BT Insight, we were facing into several challenges and changes which many of you will be familiar with. Changes of business priorities, leadership and impact of restructures. And we were a team spread over multiple locations and across multiple sub-teams. All of this was impacting our team culture.
So, about 18 months ago, a volunteer group of us within the team set out to understand and improve the team's culture.
Clare Woodward
We ran one-on-one interviews with every member of the team to gather everyone's honest and open thoughts and opinions. This intentionally went beyond the usual HR engagement surveys.
It generated a huge amount of feedback, which we analyzed and themed to identify recommended actions.
One of the first issues we identified was that we didn't really know each other very well. That impacted not only how easy it was to collaborate, but also our sense of belonging. And the feeling that everyone could bring their full selves to work.
Suzanne Martin
So this year, with the support of our leadership, everyone has been asked to take part in personality profiling, so that we can not only understand better, but also leverage everyone's strengths.
We ran a series of workshops with the team to help us understand each other and these better.
We're continuing to work on this and deliver commitments that were identified by our culture group and wider team.
Clare Woodward
But we also recognize that we're all dealing with different things that have the potential to impact who we are, our perspectives and how we show up. And so, we started to think there's a separate piece needed.
To build empathy and understanding of different experiences and perspectives across the team. By understanding the personal stories that are currently missing in the day-to-day. To create an exchange of empathy.
Suzanne Martin
And we're taking the idea of storytelling further, to rehumanize the team and the people behind the many e-mails and Teams messages. To get closer to each other, creating better empathy and understanding.
And we want to create an outlet for sharing those more personal things.
We're all human, right? We have many different experiences, both in and outside of work.
We're complex, dealing with a myriad of things, good and bad, every day. And it's not just the negative things. What about those key life transitions, like a parent coming back from extended family leave, for example.
Clare Woodward
We both have topics close to our hearts that have or do impact who we are able to be at work. We've also both been influenced by watching other people share personal stories, and now know firsthand how transformative it can be.
Suzanne Martin
We've seen how, when we do begin to share, there's been a difference in how we feel. How bringing more of who we are into our work environments has enabled a greater sense of belonging.
We've also seen firsthand that by sharing, we have a greater understanding of each other, have more respect and inevitably work better together.
And it's actually what sparked the idea to deliver this talk at Quirks originally.
So, we'd like to share some of those stories with you.
Clare Woodward
I live with chronic pain, and it impacts everything I do. But I've only just recently started talking more openly about pain. How it affects my ability to show up to work, as well as my ability to go through life more generally.
There are the practical and logistical considerations, like hospital appointments, or where I'm going to sit or stand comfortably, but there's also the less obvious considerations.
Chronic pain is exhausting, and there are some days when I just feel like I'm not functioning at my full ability. It can impact my mood, my ability to think and my ability to make decisions.
Hearing someone else talk about their experiences with a chronic illness gave me the courage to start talking about my experiences. And the more I have, the easier it becomes, and the more I find people talk about their experiences back to me.
Suzanne Martin
Thank you, Clare.
My side represents the different challenges that I've faced whilst navigating my career. These are very much rooted in those key life transitions that can fundamentally impact the way we see the world and how we deal with daily life.
Some of these, many of you will recognize. From navigating the transition to becoming a parent and the daily challenge that brings whilst working, to times when I've had challenges with my mental health. And the loud voice of imposter syndrome telling me I haven't earned my place in the room.
To the significant impact that loss and grief have had, not only when I've been going directly through it, but how it has changed my outlooks and perspective.
Now, there are times in the past that I wouldn't have shared any of these at work for fear of judgment. It's only when the environment has felt right, but perhaps more importantly when I've heard others share their stories. Hearing those more personal stories from people that I respect in the organizations I've worked for, and in the wider insight interest industry, has quite simply been a game changer. Showing that our challenges don't always have to be a barrier to growth.
Clare Woodward
Now, we recognize this isn't for everyone. It requires a safe culture to do so. And even amongst the two of us, there are elements we felt we wouldn't share about our experiences. And a recognition that context can impact our comfort levels when it comes to sharing personal stories.
But we also know from the feedback we had after Quirk’s that it's important to encourage these conversations.
We had people thank us for our courage for being so open. We also had people share their stories back to us. Demonstrating a desire for the creation of a safe space to share.
And it's clear people valued the human connection, which sometimes otherwise gets lost at conferences, because people called out what a welcome change it was to focus on the human over the shiny new tech.
Empathy is a superpower. It's something we as an industry excel in. But it's also a skill that needs to be built, a muscle that needs to be exercised. And we need to practice what we preach.
Audio shared by Suzanne Martin: So we wanted to find a way to reframe the focus, to be clear that empathy is critical for us as researchers, and to make it an even easier approach to get behind.
Suzanne Martin
And sharing stories is a way to use this muscle.
Beyond simply gathering data, empathy and research involve a genuine interest in understanding the needs, concerns and aspirations of people.
Because empathy is a skill in insight that can deliver in three core areas; our stakeholders and partners, our customers or communities we serve, and our teams. So, we want to encourage it in a way that works for both teams and individuals within it. Whilst remembering that we do need to help people also feel like it's safe to do so.
We also think this could help counteract some of the backlash and declining interest in equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives that we're seeing outside of our industry. Creating a deeper understanding of deeper perspectives and allowing more people to contribute.
Clare Woodward
Because if you think about it, the better we are at sharing within our own teams and with our own people, the more we know and understand about what challenges our teams might be facing. And the more we have empathy for them and understand any adaptations they might need.
Then the more it becomes second nature when considering this for our customers, and how we approach research with them. And the better we'll be at analyzing different perspectives within our research. And the more inclusive internally and externally we become.
Suzanne Martin
For example, if you can understand the experience of a colleague with a health challenge. Then you already start to have an insight into the challenges of certain key customer audiences and can start to be an advocate.
Clare Woodward
Because ultimately, our role as researchers is to know and advocate for people.
But we believe we're hampered in doing this if we don't know and understand each other. And this is something we would love to encourage, not only within our team at BT, but also within the wider industry.
So, we look forward to discussing, as a community, how we can build on this.
Suzanne Martin
We started with a question, and now we'd like to end with some more questions, because we'd love to continue this discussion. Empathy is not just about one moment in time.
So if we can leave you with some questions to take away, please think about what you could do within your team. What could we all do as an industry? And how can we create those right platforms?
Thank you for listening today.
Clare Woodward
Thanks, everyone.