Why Empathy Still Matters in an Age of Automated Customer Experience

Akanksha Sharma of CITTA World emphasises on how thoughtful design, clear guidance and attentive customer relationships help brands earn trust across baby care and adult skincare

For a parent choosing a baby wash, the decision carries a particular responsibility: the person making the purchase must interpret the needs of someone who cannot explain them. For an adult choosing a serum or moisturiser, the questions are different but equally personal. Will it fit into my routine? Do I understand what it is meant to do? Can I trust the advice behind my choice?

Baby care and adult personal care meet at this need for confidence. Their audiences bring different concerns to the shelf, yet both are choosing products that become part of intimate, repeated moments at home. A baby’s bath involves a caregiver’s hands, time and attention. An adult’s skincare routine may carry expectations built through recommendations, research and earlier experiences. The product enters a setting far more complex than a purchase alone can reveal.

For brands operating in this space, customer experience begins with understanding that setting. It encompasses the information available before purchase, the convenience of use and the support offered when questions arise. In a detailed interaction with Akanksha Sharma, CEO, Co-Founder and Chief Experience Head of CITTA World, returns to these considerations through examples of product design, customer feedback and repeat buying. Her account offers a perspective on how a care brand can remain close to the everyday realities behind its categories.

Two people, one care experience

Baby care presents a distinctive design challenge: the buyer and the user have different roles in the same experience. The child experiences the product. The parent or caregiver selects it, handles it and decides whether it belongs in the routine. A brand needs to understand both.

The Chief Experience Head described convenience as an important consideration in CITTA’s baby-care design, citing the choice of a foaming shampoo format. Her explanation centres on the practical circumstances of bathing a child and making that process easier for the caregiver. The example gives substance to customer-centric design. Understanding an audience means considering what happens around the product: who is holding the child, how the product is handled and how comfortably it fits into an existing ritual. She also emphasised on the fact that baby-care purchases require considerable trust-building and information. A parent is making a decision on another person’s behalf, which changes the reassurance they seek.

The implication for the sector is significant. Product communication must answer the caregiver’s questions, while design must account for the experience of care itself. An apparently small decision about format can influence how naturally a product becomes part of family life. Adult skincare presents another challenge: helping people make sense of the choices before them.

For a care brand, clarity involves explaining the purpose of a product, its place within a routine and the expectations surrounding its use. The customer’s uncertainty becomes an important part of the communication brief.

Different generations, a shared need for confidence

Asked about communicating with older consumers, millennials and Gen Z, The Chief Experience Head identified trust as the common requirement. “The core factor will remain the same with all of them, which is that they would want to trust the product first,” she says.

She sees the presentation of information as a key difference between audiences. The format and style may change, while the underlying need for confidence remains. That distinction matters for brands managing multiple customer groups. A communication strategy can adapt its language and delivery while keeping the explanation consistent.

Across generations, the question is recognisable: is this a sensible choice for me? For leadership teams, this places audience understanding alongside product understanding. Knowing what a product is intended to do is one task; explaining it in a way that feels relevant and accessible to different people is another.

Keeping the customer’s voice close to leadership

One of the more revealing aspects of Sharma’s approach is her effort to hear feedback directly. The business value lies in how those observations inform decisions. Customer-facing teams can contribute to product development, education and the way a brand presents its range.

Sharma also recognises the company’s circumstances: Direct outreach remains manageable because its online customer base is smaller than its retail audience. As the business develops, preserving the substance of those conversations becomes an important organisational task. The challenge is to retain the detail that makes feedback useful, the customer’s circumstances, expectations and reasons for asking.

A favourable review captures one expression of satisfaction. Sharma also looks at what customers do over time. Repeat buying and movement between categories offer a different view of the relationship. A customer may begin by trusting an individual product and gradually become willing to consider the brand more broadly.

For a business expanding its portfolio, that distinction is useful. Existing trust creates an opportunity to introduce another product, while each new experience must earn its own place in the customer’s routine.

Technology and the judgement behind care

Sharma sees a role for digital tools in helping customers find information and navigate choices. Her discussion of websites, messaging and automation centres on making assistance more accessible. She also emphasises human judgement when an interaction becomes more sensitive or a customer grows frustrated.

The point is particularly relevant to customer-support design. An efficient response must also be appropriate to the situation. Teams need to recognise when a routine exchange requires closer attention and ensure that someone can take responsibility.

For Akanksha, understanding consumer psychology includes noticing the person’s experience during the conversation itself. That makes empathy a practical capability. It helps a business recognise when an answer has clarified a concern, when further explanation is needed and when the customer requires a more considered response.

The founder’s perspective behind the business

CITTA’s beginnings were rooted in Sharma’s interest in the choices available to families. While studying in the US, news coverage about concerns surrounding a widely used baby-care product prompted her to examine the category. She discussed the idea with her mother, whose training in cosmetology helped introduce her to people with relevant expertise.

The company began with baby care before extending into adult personal care.

That journey helps explain the emphasis running through her interview: product development, customer understanding and communication are closely connected. A parent choosing a baby wash and an adult choosing a moisturiser enter the category with different questions. Both need a brand that can explain its offering, understand the circumstances of use and remain responsive afterwards. The relationship is built across those ordinary moments. A clear answer at the shelf, a format that makes a routine easier and a conversation that reaches the right person can each help turn an initial choice into a more confident one.

For a care brand, earning a place in someone’s routine means earning their confidence repeatedly, through the product they use and the attention they receive.