Customer empathy is something that may have seemed like a buzzword or lip-service in the past, but it’s proven to be a competitive differentiator. We’re often asked for practical tips on how to do so. With everyone’s schedules already overpacked, when is there any time to share insight—especially when it’s in the form of hours of video?

Here’s how to turn hours of video into empathy sessions:

1. Include absolutely everyone and make it easy to join!

We believe every single employee benefits from—and is able to do their job better—as a result of truly understanding their customers. At these sessions, you can get together to watch recorded customer interviews where they talk about their goals and problems. Some tips on how to get this started and how to maintain it:

• • Rotate where and when the sessions are held and what the focus is so different parts of the organization are able to participate.
• • Deploy your champions. Even at a company like ours that has built its culture around the importance of empathy, people get busy and urgent things come up. As a leader, you must make it a habit to talk about the importance of these sessions, to reference specific learnings and actions that come out of them, and to remind your employees that attending will make them better at their jobs (and ultimately more successful as an organization). This reinforcement promotes employees to step away from their desks, rearrange meetings, and make attending these sessions both a habit and a priority.
• • Make it easy. Your sessions can be scheduled over lunch so that you and your employees can watch the videos and chat as you eat. And they’re recorded so that if anyone misses them they can catch up later.
• • Leave time for discussion after the videos. And take notes on findings.

2. Structure your customer interviews as empathy tests, not usability tests.

Get them talking about themselves and record it. The recordings can be through live conversation or recorded tests. When you’re putting together your questions for your empathy session videos, think about them more as a chance to get to know how your customers think and what’s important to them, and less about what they think about your product or service.

Some of our favorite questions include:

• • Describe your role, what are you responsible for?
• • How are you measured?
• • What other roles/teams do you regularly interact with?
• • What are your goals for the year?
• • What are the biggest barriers to achieving those goals?
• • What keeps you up at night?

At the viewing sessions, we strongly recommend screening the full interviews, not just excerpts. You want people to build empathy by hearing how customers talk and what their lives are like. It’s not about excerpts, it’s about understanding.

3. Give it time.

Habits can take a little time to become routine. If you’re working on starting a customer empathy program, or something similar at your company, be patient and persistent. Once a few people start gaining insights that make them think about taking a different, more customer-centric approach to a question or challenge, word will spread about the value of empathy hours and learning from and about your customers as a team.