Privacy Policy
and Sources Cited
This Privacy Policy describes how your personal information is collected, used, and shared when you visit or make a purchase from www.versantmetrics.com (the “Site”).
PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT
When you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device. Additionally, as you browse the Site, we collect information about the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to the Site, and information about how you interact with the Site. We refer to this automatically-collected information as “Device Information.”
We collect Device Information using the following technologies:
- “Cookies” are data files that are placed on your device or computer and often include an anonymous unique identifier. For more information about cookies, and how to disable cookies, visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org.
- “Log files” track actions occurring on the Site, and collect data including your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, referring/exit pages, and date/time stamps.
- “Web beacons,” “tags,” and “pixels” are electronic files used to record information about how you browse the Site.
Additionally when you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through the Site, we collect certain information from you, including your name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers), email address, and phone number. We refer to this information as “Order Information.”
When we talk about “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we are talking both about Device Information and Order Information.
HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We use the Order Information that we collect generally to fulfill any orders placed through the Site (including processing your payment information, arranging for shipping, and providing you with invoices and/or order confirmations). Additionally, we use this Order Information to:
Communicate with you;
Screen our orders for potential risk or fraud; and
When in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services.
We use the Device Information that we collect to help us screen for potential risk and fraud (in particular, your IP address), and more generally to improve and optimize our Site (for example, by generating analytics about how our customers browse and interact with the Site, and to assess the success of our marketing and advertising campaigns).
SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. For example, we use Google Analytics to help us understand how our customers use the Site--you can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Finally, we may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.
BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING
As described above, we use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page at http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work.
You can opt out of specific targeted advertising by:
FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads
GOOGLE - https://www.google.com/settings/ads/anonymous
Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: http://optout.aboutads.info/.
DO NOT TRACK
Please note that we do not alter our Site’s data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.
YOUR RIGHTS
If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please contact us through the contact information below.
Additionally, if you are a European resident we note that we are processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you make an order through the Site), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above. Additionally, please note that your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada and the United States.
DATA RETENTION
When you place an order through the Site, we will maintain your Order Information for our records unless and until you ask us to delete this information.
MINORS
The Site is not intended for individuals under the age of 18.
CHANGES
We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
CONTACT US
For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail at scott@versantmetrics.com.
Sources Cited
“Engagement scores rise (8%), handling times decrease (9.9%), and absenteeism, safety incidents, and dissatisfied customers can drop by 40-50%.”
The 8% rise in engagement scores reported by Gallup (n.d.) in their analysis of the 12 needs that managers can meet to improve employees’ productivity. The same source cites a 41% reduction in absenteeism and 46% reduction in safety incidents, if companies can double the ratio of employees (from 4 out of 10 to 8 out of 10) who agree that their supervisor or someone at work seems to care about them as a person.
Gallup. (n.d.). Q12 question summary. Retrieved from https://www.gallup.com/workplace/356045/q12-question-summary.aspx
The 9.9% decrease in customer handling times and the 50% decrease in dissatisfied customers comes from a Harvard Business Review case study in which H&R Block implemented a VR soft-skills training program.
Meister, J. C. (2021). How companies are using VR to develop employees' soft skills. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved October 5, 2023, from https://hbr.org/2021/01/how-companies-are-using-vr-to-develop-employees-soft-skills
“A 2023 Ernst & Young study found that most people (87-88%) believe empathy in the workplace leads to increased efficiency, creativity, and job satisfaction.”
Ernst & Young. (2023). Authentic empathy: The key to building a successful business. Retrieved from https://www.ey.com/en_us/consulting/authentic-empathy
“A separate study in the Harvard Business Review showed that the 10 most empathetic companies increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10, and generated 50% more earnings.”
Parmar, B. (2016). The most (and least) empathetic companies, 2016. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-most-and-least-empathetic-companies-2016
RESEARCH ON EMPATHY AND METRICS-DRIVEN CONVERSATION SKILLS:
Burns, D.D., & Nolen-Hoeksma, S. (1992). Therapeutic empathy and recovery from depression in cognitive-behavioral therapy: A structural equation model. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 60(3), 441-449.
Campbell, R.G. & Babrow, A.S. (2004). The role of empathy in responses to persuasive risk communication: Overcoming resistance to HIV prevention messages. Health Communication, 16(2), 159-182.
Cissna, K. N., & Anderson, R. (1990). The contributions of Carl R. Rogers to a philosophical praxis of dialogue. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 54(2), 125-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570319009374331.
Elliott, R., Bohart, A.C., Watson, J.C & Greenberg, L.S. (2011). Empathy. In J.C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work: Evidence-based responsiveness (pp. 132-152). New York: Oxford University Press.
Elliott, R., Bohart, A.C., Watson, J.C., & Greenberg, L.S. (2011). Empathy. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 43-49.
Elliott, R., Bohart, A., Larson, D., Muntigl, P., & Smoliak, O. (2023). Empathic reflections by themselves are not effective: Meta-analysis and qualitative synthesis. Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, 33(7), 957–973. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2023.2218981
Ellis, J.D., Grekin, E.R., Beatty, J.R., McGoron, L., LaLiberte, B.V., Pop, D.E...Ondersma, S.J. (2017). Effects of narrator empathy in computer delivered brief interventions for alcohol use. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 61, 29-32.
Fischer, D.J., & Moyers, T.B. (2014). Is there an association between empathic speech and change talk in motivational interviewing sessions? Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 32(1), 3-18.
Klonek, Florian & Quera, Vicenç & Kauffeld, Simone. (2015). Coding interactions in Motivational Interviewing with computer-software: What are the advantages for process researchers?. Computers in Human Behavior. 44. 10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.034.
Imel, Z. E., Pace, B. T., Soma, C. S., Tanana, M., Hirsch, T., Gibson, J., Georgiou, P., Narayanan, S., & Atkins, D. C. (2019). Design feasibility of an automated, machine-learning based feedback system for motivational interviewing. Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 56(2), 318–328. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000221
Lord, S. P., Sheng, E., Imel, Z. E., Baer, J., Atkins, D. C. (2015). More Than Reflections: Empathy in Motivational Interviewing Includes Language Style Synchrony Between Therapist and Client. Behavior Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2014.11.002
Miller, W.R. & Baca, L.M. (1983). Two-year follow-up of bibliotherapy and therapist-directed controlled drinking training for problem drinkers. Behavior Therapy, 14, 441-448.
Moyers, T.B., Houck J.M., Rice, S.L. , Longabaugh, R., & Miller, W.R. (2016). Therapist empathy, combined behavioral intervention, and alcohol outcomes in the COMBINE research project. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 84(3), 221-229.
Tanana, M. J., Soma, C. S., Srikumar, V., Atkins, D. C., & Imel, Z. E. (2019). Development and Evaluation of ClientBot: Patient-Like Conversational Agent to Train Basic Counseling Skills. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(7), e12529. https://doi.org/10.2196/12529.
Watson, J.C., McMullen, E.J., Rodrigues, A., & Prosser, M.C. (2020). Examining the role of therapists' empathy and clients' attachment styles on changes in clients' affect regulation and outcome in teh treatment of depression. Psychotherapy Research, 30(6), 693-705.
Welivita, A., & Pu, P. (2022). Curating a large-scale motivational interviewing dataset using peer support forums. In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (pp. 3315-3330). International Committee on Computational Linguistics. Retrieved from https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.293.
Xiao, B., Huang, C., Imel, Z. E., Atkins, D. C., Georgiou, P., & Narayanan, S. S. (2016). A technology prototype system for rating therapist empathy from audio recordings in addiction counseling. PeerJ. Computer science, 2, e59. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.59