NEWS
Zurich Insurance study reveals empathy is the competitive edge companies shouldn’ t ignore
Aglobal study by Zurich Insurance Group, in collaboration with
Stanford University’ s Professor, Jamil Zaki, reveals a critical empathy gap – a disconnect between what consumers want and what companies deliver.
The results of the study called Addressing the Empathy Gap align to decades of academic research that suggest empathetic interactions can drive business success with 73 % of consumers avoiding businesses that don’ t show empathy.
Empathy is at the centre of Zurich’ s global customer strategy, with the insurer announcing the successful roll-out of a Global Empathy Training Programme to more than a quarter of its workforce since 2023 with impactful results.
Companies are failing to prioritise empathy in business strategy, which is leading to almost half of consumers( 43 %) taking their business elsewhere.
Despite the growth of AI, 71 % of consumers surveyed believe it cannot create human connections. While AI enhances efficiency, the future of customer experience will include a strategic blend of technological efficiency and genuine human connection.
Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance, said:“ In today’ s world, empathy is key to shaping customer experience. Organisations need to embed genuine human connection as a foundation for trust, loyalty and sustainable growth.”
The study found that consumers value empathy highly when making brand choices, as three in five( 60 %) say they only engage with companies that demonstrate genuine care.
Over three-quarters( 78 %) of consumers believe that‘ most companies only care about making money, not the genuine needs of their consumers’ while 72 % believe companies become less empathetic once a contract is signed.
Nurses, lecturers, librarians and surveyors lead AI adoption in the UK’ s‘ invisible AI workforce’, finds Multiverse
The UK’ s Artificial Intelligence workforce is not confined to tech hubs and software developers, according to new jobs analysis from Multiverse, an upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption. Instead, an‘ invisible’ AI workforce of nurses, librarians, surveyors and doctors spread across the country are powering the UK’ s burgeoning AI revolution.
There are 12 million people in the UK, who are in‘ high-risk’ occupations projected to decline in the next 10 years due to technological change, according to the National Foundation for
Educational Research. Reskilling opportunities, particularly in light of the UK’ s ageing population, must therefore be evenly distributed across the workforce to ensure everyone can benefit from AI’ s productivity promise.
The analysis of over 2,500 people on Multiverse’ s AI apprenticeship programmes reveals that over two-thirds( 67 %) are in non-tech roles – that is, roles whose job titles don’ t include keywords related to tech, data and AI. Instead, among the 50 most common‘ invisible’ roles are frontline public service, education, healthcare and construction roles, including nurses, doctors, librarians, pharmacists, therapists, lecturers and surveyors.
Featuring in the full‘ invisible’ AI jobs list are occupations as varied as shipping clerks, biomedical scientists, charity fundraisers, creative directors, child protection workers, retail staff and merchandisers, tenancy managers, holiday let advisors – and even a herbarium curator.
The data underlines the fact that AI is rapidly being adopted in critical sectors far beyond the technology industry.
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