Where and when?

Date: Thu 18 Sep 2025

Time: 09:30 - 12:30

Location: Online

This 3 hour course will be invaluable for anyone seeking to level up their empathy, active listening skills and ways to respond compassionately to customers in emotionally sensitive or challenging circumstances, including those who are facing bereavement.

Our trainers are experts in ‘The Human Element’ – how we relate to our customers and provide effective, tailored outcomes.

Course Description

Global events in recent years have increased vulnerability in many of our customers and ourselves. Additionally, common life events we may all face at any given time can impact us in a range of ways.

Our customers need more from us than ever before, and levelling up our ability to respond effectively to our customers unique situations on a human level is not only vital, but a key business differentiator.

Participants will have the opportunity to build skills, confidence and resilience to support positive human connection. Attending to our own wellbeing is also vital and another key outcome of this course.

Learning outcomes

  • Understand what empathy in action truly looks like when in conversation with customers who are emotionally sensitive or vulnerable in some way
  • Explore our Sphere of Influence when it comes to supporting customers in sensitive or vulnerable circumstances
  • Evaluate the skills and attributes needed to effectively support customers who are experiencing emotional vulnerability
  • Outline the journey and process of grief, understanding how this can help us when supporting our customers
  • Consider the power of our ‘presence’ when coming alongside customers who are emotionally sensitive, including those who are bereaved
  • Identify our own barriers to listening and ways to overcome them
  • Explore how to convey compassion with our own body language, voice, pitch, and tone
  • Build on our skills of empathy, effective listening and responding when supporting customers in emotionally sensitive circumstances
  • Identify practical ways we can take action to reduce customer effort and alleviate additional stress when customers are already facing a heavy load

Benefits to your business

Once your agents know how to tune in supportively to customers experiencing emotionally sensitive and challenging circumstances it helps build a stronger bond between your brand and your customers.

Customers remember organisations that go above and beyond, which are there for them when they really need someone.

Equipping your frontline agents with these kinds of skills will move your relationship with your customers beyond the merely transactional. If your organisation’s mission is to care for your employees and customers, this course will go a long way to helping you bring that commitment to life.

Course content

  • Explore our role in supporting customers in challenging circumstances and the pitfalls to avoid.
  • Listen more comfortably, and in a supportive manner, to individual customer concerns.
  • Explore some common reactions when customers are in sensitive circumstances (including those experiencing loss) – how they might present in the feeling states and behaviours our customers display.
  • Identify and explore together aspects of bereavement, the grief process, and the journey it can take us on.
  • Explore techniques for empathic listening and responding: paraphrasing, reflecting, and summarising.
  • Practice using customer-based scenarios and ways we can best align and support customers’ unique situations, by listening and responding appropriately.
  • Working as a group, examine our own processes and identify practical ways we can reduce customer effort and alleviate additional stress.

About the trainer

Sophia Jakeman: Sophia is a qualified tutor, trainer and psychotherapist with 30 years’ experience working across the public, private, voluntary and FE sectors. As a senior trainer with BPA, she works closely with clients to deliver impactful solutions that drive customer excellence. Her work is influenced and underpinned by a career-driven philosophy that human connection and the strength of our relationships sit at the heart of both business and personal success.

 

Helen Beaumont Manahan: Helen joined BPA Quality in 2013 after previous roles in teaching and operations. As EMEA Quality Solutions and CX Manager, she leverages her passion and expertise for all aspects of Quality and Customer Experience. Helen’s role requires the implementation of a range of complex quality programmes across the globe; training and sharing best practice, and helping organisations deliver excellence to their customers and staff.

 

What delegates say

“Sophia and Helen were both insightful, knowledgeable and clearly passionate about what they do! I found their delivery of the material was captivating. I was engaged throughout and felt I have really taken away so much from today.”

Book your place(s)

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Where and when?

Date: Thu 18 Sep 2025

Time: 09:30 - 12:30

Location: Online

Format

3-hour online session using Zoom or Teams.

Who is it for?

Contact centre front line advisors, coaches and specialist teams who support bereavement or wider vulnerable circumstances.

Why should you go?

Take your empathy skills to a deeper level with this specialised programme developed by Contact Centre experts. By raising our awareness and honing our empathic skills, we can tune in appropriately and respond supportively to customers in emotionally sensitive and vulnerable circumstances.

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