Is Empathy Transferable?

Regarding human assistance I'm firmly in the camp that empathy is a trainable skill. I'm now wondering if empathy is a transferable skill to digital assistance.

The image I've used for this article's banner combine two datasets. Each from a global research report commissioned by Genesys a few years back. Both were relevant then. Even more so now for the following reason.

The consumer research on the left hand side surfaces our abiding priorities in customer service: empathy, speed and personalisation. However if you study the questions more carefully, there is a more nuanced trade-off being described.

Sometimes we want to trade time for a fuller conversation with someone who shows care and gets our situation. Unfortunately, in those situations, less than 10% of advisors globally see empathy as their top superpower.(look at right hand dataset) Good news is that it's trainable and can be culturally enabled as a mindset and behaviour once service leadership make it a priority.

Then coming in second is the default mission of every digital initiative. Make it fast and efficient. Either human or digital assistance is fine. Incidentally this made me wonder if there was an implicit acceptance that either option could also work in the first scenario if the desired outcome could still be met.

Although ranked one and two I'd wager both matter in equal measure to us as customers. It all depends on our needs in the moment. Empathy does not look a particular way. It's about sensing what matters to another person and adapting to those needs. Either fast or slow. So we need it in every situation.

I'd expect a human to pick up on the clues in which matters early in a conversation and continue to sense check throughout.

So here's my question.

Can we transfer empathy to digital assistance? And before you decide too fast, just reflect on the extraordinary times we are passing through. I listened to an avatar trying to onboard me for an online course today. Apart from a strange lip curl at the end, the lip synch and body presence realism engaged me to the extent of feeling I was being communicated to.

Have you experienced what Sora can do? Watch and wonder. Of course Generative AI can splash fairy dust into our eyes and we all get a little giddy when the next new trick turns up.

That said, human language and the broader skills of sensing another person's meaning have been practiced and refined over many, many millennia. And all I mean by that is that it's a high bar but not an impossible one.

If you ignore the immediate 'yes but' response based on current bot experiences and assume lots more practice will make things more perfect than now, what are we attempting to do when we set ourselves the challenge of transferring the super power of empathy to a digital assistance?

Not a philosophical debate but as a practical mapping exercise and transfer of capability.

Up for thinking that one through and sharing some thoughts?