Empathy is not a soft skill layered on top of technology. It is the foundation of effective customer experience strategy. Ian Kreiger, Futures Director at ServiceNow, and Brett Lovett, ServiceNow Practice Leader for APJ at Cognizant, unpack what it actually means to build empathy into CX operations, and why most organizations get the order of operations wrong. The conversation starts with a striking number: 86% of customers still want to pick up the phone and talk to a person, even as AI reshapes service delivery. That preference is not nostalgia. It signals something most CX strategies underestimate. Brett introduces a three-stage empathy framework shaped like a megaphone. Stage one is understanding and feeling the customer's emotion. Stage two is understanding the actual problem. Stage three is resolution. Most organizations jump directly to resolution. The framework explains why so many CX investments fall short. The practical insight: you cannot resolve a challenge efficiently if you have not crossed the empathy threshold first. The first two stages are narrow. Resolution is where effort and resources expand. Getting the early stages right is what makes the wide stage work. What you will learn: Why empathy must precede problem-solving in any effective CX model A three-stage framework for structuring customer interactions Why speed to resolution depends on getting the emotional stage right first What the 86% statistic reveals about customer expectations in an AI-first world Explore the research behind this conversation: The CX Shift https://www.servicenow.com/standard/resource-now/infographic/info-cx-shift-au.html