Why Call Center Management Should Pay Attention to Memories

In the quest for developing the professional and perfect approach to quality customer care, call center management is always on the hunt for that innovative approach that will set them apart from the competition. In a market where most products and services are considered commodities, it is the customer experience that can set one brand apart from another.

A recent Huffington Post (News - Alert) piece by Gregory Ciotti highlighted a different twist on the customer experience. He suggests that customers don’t base buying decisions on experiences, but rather on memories. As humans, we naturally focus attention on our losses rather than our gains and an evening of bliss is quickly overshadowed by a moment of sorrow.

In the physical environment, you may have the opportunity to create either type of memory for the customer. Ciotti uses the example of a great evening out to dinner with friends. The restaurant is perfect, the conversation stimulating and the food beyond expectation. The evening is literally perfect until the waiter spills your wine on your dessert and into your lap. The perfect evening of bliss is quickly replaced by an unfortunate event that shapes your memory of the experience.

While call center management doesn’t need to worry about wine spilled on your dessert or in your lap, there should be concern for memory. We might not remember every work spoken in a conversation, but there are specific cues that will bring back the experience even if we think we’ve forgotten. Sensory experiences, information and time can shape memory and if the support received from the call center agent falls short, the individual is likely to associate it with bad memories.

Consider this example – a customer calls into the call center and makes her way easily through the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) step and then determines she needs to speak with a live agent. A friendly voice answers the phone almost immediately and solves the issue right away. The customer then has a last-minute request to make a change to something on her account. The agent doesn’t know how to complete that step and needs to escalate the call. The customer is put on hold for several minutes before the call is accidentally disconnected.

While the original issue was easily resolved and the customer should have been able to walk away satisfied, the error at the end of the call instead created a bad memory. She was left with the impression that the agent was ill-trained and ill-informed and the company didn’t care enough to resolve her problem or even make sure her call would still be connected. Call center management could view this as the perfect call gone bad.

Not every interaction will have such complexities, but the point is to examine the experience overall and how customers may be developing memories of interacting with your brand. If they aren’t all positive, there could be room for improvement.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi