Harding & Yorke was founded in 1993. 

Not content with the way that ‘service' was measured the founders of Harding & Yorke set out to design and test a measure that would capture the effects of service procedures - more normally captured by Customer Satisfaction models.

They spent a whole year researching Customers buying/staying strategies and concluded that 70 percent of all decisions were based on emotion; or to put it more concisely how they felt about the supplier.

With the help of behavioural psychologists the first Empathy-related questionnaire was designed.  One problem still eluded them - trying to get emotional, rather than simple logic, responses from customers.

If you ask Customers how they feel about a particular interaction they tend to answer with their conscious impressions rather than their sub-conscious ones - and it was these that tended to influence feelings most deeply. Customers would also wrap up all their interactions (and hearsay from friends, neighbours and colleagues) into the one response - which didn't really help organisations understand how they actually felt right now.

The questionnaire was adapted to third party responses to achieve objectivity and consistency - and, whilst the questionnaire has changed considerably through the experiences gained over the years, the core measurements awarded to organisations are, for the most part, still scored by highly trained Empathy Researchers employed by Harding & Yorke and using this original, unique model for Empathy.

In 1995, the findings of the research started to be delivered back to organisations as ‘Experiences' rather than just data; this proved a turning point both in terms of organisations buying into the concept and the value it offered them in catalysing their staff into new and sustainable behaviours.

During 1999 - 2000 our Clients increasingly wanted us to take a more proactive stance in helping them to improve their Empathy with their own Customers and so the concept of Empathy Solutions was founded.  We knew that what was currently available to our Clients was not supporting their needs and rather than developing a typical consultancy we would look at the whole concept and develop a new approach.

It wasn't until January 2001 that we felt comfortable in offering our new services to our Clients.  We tendered for the first phase of the Cultural Change Programme for Friends Provident and won our first Empathy Solutions Contract.  Stuart Hastings, the Strategic Projects Director at Friends Provident said

"It was the Passion, the Package and the Freshness that convinced us that they were serious about it and they had the experience to deliver.  It is about helping us, not stuffing a process down our throat."

Having completed the first phase of the project Stuart added

"I have been involved in many projects, but this one is the most interesting, demanding, scary and, without doubt, the one with the most potential I have ever been involved with.  I am very pleased to confirm my early impressions of Empathy Solutions were right."

In 2002, we were lucky and proud to employ the services of Nickie Hawton to take the development of Empathy Solutions on to the next stage.

Also during 2000 - 2001 there seemed an increasing need to create a currency of Empathy so that different companies could compare how they made their customers feel in relation to their competitors - The Empathy Rating Index Company (known affectionately as ERIC) was conceived and piloted.

ERIC now reports semi-annually on 13 industries and over 200 companies collecting and analysing over 1.25 million data points each year.   The findings give all those involved a catalogued 'objective' measurement of the essential subjective aspects of their customer interactions that will be comparable across industries.

The business now operates under one Limited company namely: Empathy Services Limited which trades simply as ‘Harding & Yorke'.

Also in 2006, it was decided to re-locate to a more rural location and we now have wonderful open-plan offices in Appleford-on-Thames.  This has cemented the various operational teams as a single entity.

As well as maintaining our Homeworker researcher base we also have offices in Shropshire at: 

In 2007 whilst retaining the familiar logo we launched our new values.  These can be found on the reverse of our business cards and read:

• Our passion is to enable our clients to create an organisation focussed on delivering not just great, but truly differentiated customer experiences.
• Our underlying philosophy is to inspire and motivate individuals and businesses to achieve excellence in a sustainable and profitable way.
• We do this whilst balancing the needs of all our stakeholders, including our families, so that each will instinctively know that we are working in their best interests.

In October 2007 the University of Surrey (under Dr. Yuksel Ekinci and Prof Merlin Stone) reported on the findings of the first three years of ERIC Data.

The findings of the study suggest that ERIC has a statistically significant impact on profitability as measured by Return on Capital Employed (ROCE). The inter-correlation between the six dimensions of ERIC and profitability was very strong (85). The ERIC model explained 72 per cent of the total variance in profitability which was extremely good (p < .05). Five out of the 6 ERIC dimensions had a statistically significant impact on profitability. Importantly, the EMPATHY dimension had a positive impact on profitability. Two dimensions had negative impacts on profitability but had positive correlations with the Empathy dimension.

The study offers implications for developing successful customer relationships and managing profitability through ERIC.

Harding & Yorke look forward to building on this fantastic opportunity to change the way companies throughout the world see, perceive and report on the way they work with their brands, their customers and their people.