Case Study: Winning With Customer Empathy

The scenario below is illustrative, built from patterns that were playing out at small businesses across the country in March 2020, not a report on one named company.

In the second week of March, a mid-sized city’s local businesses were watching the same headlines everyone else was: rising case counts, the WHO’s pandemic declaration and city after city announcing closures of restaurants, gyms and non-essential retail. A small home goods shop with a modest but loyal email list, a few thousand names built up over years of local events and word of mouth, had to decide what to send that week. The owner had a scheduled spring promotion queued up. It suddenly felt tone-deaf to send it unchanged.

The first draft, and why it didn’t go out

The marketing person drafted the obvious response first: a note announcing the shop was “here for you during these uncertain times,” followed immediately by the original discount code. Reading it back, it was clear the two halves fought each other. Acknowledging anxiety in one sentence and pushing a sale in the next read as opportunistic rather than caring, even though the discount itself wasn’t the problem. The sequencing was.

What went out instead

The rewrite did three things differently. First, it led with something concrete rather than a vague acknowledgment of “these times”: the shop was closing its physical location starting that Monday, staff would be paid through the transition and curbside pickup would be available within 48 hours. Concrete facts read as honest in a way that generic sympathy language doesn’t. Second, it asked rather than assumed: a single-question reply prompt asking customers what would be useful right now, curbside pickup, gift cards for later, home delivery within the city. Third, the discount code was removed entirely from that email and held for a separate message the following week, once it was clear customers weren’t in the middle of processing a closure announcement.

What the response showed

Reply volume on that first email ran far higher than any previous campaign, not because of an offer, but because the question invited a real answer. The replies clustered around two requests: curbside pickup and the ability to buy gift cards to use once the shop reopened, a way for regular customers to support the business without needing anything in return immediately. Both were things the shop could set up within days using tools it already had, a simple online form for pickup slots and its existing ecommerce platform’s built-in gift card feature.

The distinction worth keeping

The difference between the discarded draft and the one that went out wasn’t tone, both were warm and well-intentioned. It was sequencing and specificity. Leading with concrete, useful facts before asking for anything, and asking a real question instead of guessing what customers wanted, turned a routine seasonal email into the shop’s highest-engagement send of the year. The lesson that held up well beyond March 2020: empathy that shows up as an action, closing early, offering a real alternative, asking rather than assuming, reads as sincere in a way that empathetic language alone rarely does.