New Emotion: We can now detect Agent Empathy automatically

Find Agent Empathy with our new AI emotion detection model

In addition to Frustration, Gratitude, Praise, and Confusion, our platform now detects empathy in agent responses. This model identifies when agents acknowledge customer emotions and respond in a human, supportive way. It helps you to find empathy and measure it overall, without relying on extensive phrase tag setup to try to “catch” empathetic messages.

Empathy detection happens at the individual message level, just like customer emotion detection. Our models were trained on real support interactions and are built to identify phrases that show emotional awareness and connection, such as:

• “I completely understand why that’s frustrating.”
• “I know this hasn’t been straightforward for you, so I appreciate your patience.”
• “I can see where the confusion is coming from. I’d be happy to help you.”

This means support leaders can now:

• Spot agents who naturally demonstrate empathy
• Identify missed opportunities to be more human
• Use real examples in coaching to improve tone and phrasing

Why we built it

As AI and automation speed up customer support, human connection stands out more than ever. With this release, agent empathy becomes a more measurable, coachable skill that impacts customer satisfaction and retention. Now you can make it part of your quality strategy, right alongside reducing handling times and repeat contact rates.

How to Find ‘Empathy’ in WatchTower

Explore Screen Filters
Use the Empathy > Has empathy filter on the Explore, Explore Tags, or Agents screens to find conversations where we have detected agent empathy.

Emotion Column on Interaction Search Results
Look for the new empathy icon in the Emotion column or filter results further using the Emotion dropdown.

Individual Messages within Interactions
The empathy icon will highlight messages flagged as empathetic. Click the icon to manually apply or remove empathy from any message

Emotions Metrics Tab
A new column on the Emotions tab on the Agents or Explore Tags screens includes empathy metrics so you can see the percentage of conversations with empathy detected broken down by tag group. Sort by this column to see the groups where the most or least empathy was detected.

More about Emotion Detection at EdgeTier:

We also published a blog post on Agent Empathy if you want to read more. Or, to get a fuller picture of how our Emotion Detection works, check out our documentation here.