Beyond Feel-Good—Empathy As A Core Business Metric

Zurich’s 2025 global survey reveals that three in four consumers will abandon companies that fail to show empathy—and why leaders must embed it across their business now.

For years, empathy has been the soft skill many leaders paid lip service to but struggled to operationalize. Customer experience executives put it in presentations. HR leaders championed it in onboarding. Marketers wrote about it in brand manifestos.

But Zurich’s new 2025 Addressing the Empathy Gap study reframes empathy as something much more tangible: a measurable lever with direct impact on customer behavior and company revenue. And this time, the evidence comes at scale.

What’s New — and Why It Matters

Zurich commissioned YouGov to survey 11,560 consumers across 11 countries. The findings are staggering:

• 73% of respondents said they would avoid companies that show a lack of empathy.
• 43% said they have already left a brand for this very reason.
• 61% would pay more for a brand that genuinely cares.
• 92% still value human interaction over 24/7 digital availability.
• 71% do not believe AI can replicate genuine human connection.
• In financial services specifically, 88% of customers say empathy is important, but only 63% believe the industry delivers.

There is nothing soft about these results. Empathy impacts customer behavior leading to bottom-line results: decisions to buy, stay, or leave.

The staggering size of this dataset should get every CEO and CFO to pay attention. Many prior studies relied on smaller, industry-specific samples. Zurich, however, presents a global, cross-cultural snapshot that confirms what many suspected and books like this author’s own book, The Empathy Edge, predicted back in 2019: empathy is no longer a nice-to-have differentiator. It is fast becoming table stakes to stay in the game.

Reading Between the Lines

Three big insights stand out:

1. Empathy is a purchase decision.
That 73% “avoidance” statistic is a wake-up call. Customers aren’t just annoyed when empathy is missing—they leave. And they’re increasingly willing to reward those who deliver.

2. AI has limits.
While AI will revolutionize operational efficiency, customers don’t believe it can replicate humanity. Leaders who bet everything on digital speed risk hollowing out trust. The future isn’t AI versus empathy, but AI plus empathy—automation for scale, human touch for emotion.

3. Empathy can be trained.
Zurich and other companies, such as Ritz-Carlton, Fidelity Investments, and Ford that commit to developing employee empathy skills prove the belief that empathy isn’t merely a personality trait. With intention, practice, and reinforcement, empathy can be strengthened and embedded across systems, processes, and culture.

Empathy as ROI

Plenty of executives nod along with empathy until the CFO walks in. But evidence continues to pile up that empathy delivers.

A 2024 Global Culture Report by O.C. Tanner found that organizations where leaders regularly demonstrate empathy see 3x higher engagement and half the turnover compared to peers. Employees in empathetic workplaces are also four times more likely to stay with their employer long-term.

McKinsey has likewise found that companies that embed empathy into customer journeys can increase satisfaction scores by up to 20%, reduce churn by up to 15%, and boost revenue growth between 5–10%.

The business case for empathy continues to sharpen. Empathy isn’t soft—it’s a strategy with hard returns. Zurich’s report co-author Dr. Jamil Zaki of Stanford University, puts it simply: “Many years of research consistently show that empathy drives trust, cooperation, and long-term success.”

Walking the Talk

This was not just external research: Zurich held up a mirror and revealed its own internal progress: since 2023, more than a quarter of employees have logged 46,000 hours of empathy training. This demonstrates empathy as a capability that organizations can develop at scale.

Conny Kalcher, Global Chief Customer Officer at Zurich, emailed about empathy’s impact on their own organization, “To truly bring empathy into a business it’s not just about training employees, it has to run through the business DNA, across every customer touchpoint. We’ve already seen the impact this has had on our business with a seven-point increase in our TNPS score in the last 18 months. In addition, our brand value has grown by 35 percent, making Zurich the second-fastest growing insurance brand in the global top 20.”

Kalcher shared that the training is also impacting business results. Following the implementation of empathy training coupled with other factors, a group of local underwriters not only improved customer satisfaction but also increased their strike-rate of deals landed. As a result, the company has introduced Net Revenue Retention (NRR) as a metric to directly connect the financial impact of customer loyalty to its bottom line.

How Can Leaders Execute on Empathy?

1. Audit your empathy gaps. Where are customers most vulnerable—claims, problem resolution, billing surprises? That’s where empathy has the highest ROI.
2. Embed empathy into systems. Hiring, training, leadership evaluations—all should measure and reward empathetic behavior as a way to achieve outcomes.
3. Balance speed with humanity. Digital tools matter, but don’t sacrifice trust for efficiency. Customers are telling us clearly: “Faster” doesn’t always equal “better.”
4. Train intentionally. Empathy is a muscle. It can be strengthened if it does not come naturally or has atrophied for some. Organizations must invest in and create space for reflection, practice, and feedback. In the age of AI, these human skills will be your competitive advantage

The Unanswered Questions

The Zurich findings are compelling. But they also raise new questions:

• At what point does empathy shift from differentiator to table stakes?
• How do global cultural differences shape expectations of empathy?
• Can we prove that empathy investments correlate with brand value and shareholder return?
• And perhaps most critically: how do leaders walk the talk so empathy is felt by employees and customers alike, not just promised?

The Data is Clear: Empathy is a Bottom-Line Imperative

Empathy is no longer just a leadership virtue—it’s a business metric. With three out of four customers ready to leave companies that lack it, the stakes are rising.

Zurich’s 2025 empathy report is yet another strong signal that empathy can—and must—be scaled. For leaders, the choice is no longer whether to invest in empathy. The choice is whether they want to get ahead of the curve or be left behind by it.