Empathy in Action

A bold new look at how technology can become a force multiplier to deliver more empathy and integrate deeper, more personalized human connections into everyday business interactions at scale. 

While the world has never needed more empathy than today, too often technology is used by businesses as a substitute and a barrier to real human connection. We’ve all experienced dumb chatbots, automated scripts and poor employee interactions that dehumanizes customer interactions.

That’s because brands have focused on company centric business strategies, processes and technology.

However, simply put: No customers, no business.  What if, by transforming the old company-centric way of doing business and putting customers and employees front and center, businesses could succeed faster than ever before and not at the expense of their most important assets―the very people who make it possible to be in business?  

Empathy is a powerful construct for a better world and a better business. It’s not a synonym for nice. Empathy is about respect and treating people in the context of their unique situation in a highly personalized way. 

In this groundbreaking new book, longtime technology leader and current CEO of Genesys, Tony Bates teams up with researcher and customer experience evangelist, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff to define a new path forward to put empathy into action. 

By using strategies and technologies as the flywheel to orchestrate systems of listening, understanding and predicting, as well as, taking action and learning from those interactions at scale, businesses can easily put the customer and employee first, not only meet the ever-changing customer and employee expectations, but also leapfrog their competition.  

They predict empathy is the next frontier in technology. This book is aimed at sparking an industry-wide conversation about how exponential technologies like, AI and cloud can enable a more empathetic world. 

AUTHOR BIO - About Tony Bates

Tony Bates has led multiple billion dollar companies with a simple ethos of “know your customers”. Tony Bates, CEO of Genesys, leads the company’s strategy, direction and operations in more than 100 countries, overseeing a global team of more than 5,000 employees. With decades of experience steering B2B and B2C companies through major market transitions and rapid scaling, he is a passionate technologist at heart. Beginning his career in network operations and internet infrastructure, Tony taught himself to code on his daily train commute. Swiftly gaining the business acumen, he advanced into trusted executive roles at some of the world’s most respected global SaaS companies. Tony led Cisco’s Service Provider business and then grew its Enterprise and Commercial division to over $20B in annual revenue and he served as Skype’s CEO, expanding the business to over 170M connected users. When Microsoft acquired Skype Tony, as president, was responsible for unified communications and then served as EVP of business development and developers. In addition, Tony is on the board of directors at VMWare and eBay.  

AUTHOR BIO - About Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff joined Genesys after years of being a strategic executive advisor and leading Industry Analyst at Forrester and Constellation, CX VP at Salesforce, a PWC strategic management consultant, Chief Digital/Social Officer and ROI expert at Weber Shandwick, a digital transformation lecturer at UCLA, with humble beginnings as a product engineer at General Motors and Hughes Electrics. Her experience in many different aspects of the corporate world has given her practical wisdom to use technology to scale excellence and engage all levels of employees in transforming corporate