DOWN MEMORY LINE
THE MAKING OF
MEMORIES: REMEMBER
ME? INCREASING
CUSTOMER
PREFERENCE BY
TURNING MOMENTS
INTO MEMORIES
By Daniel Oseman
W
hile we know that in-the-
moment data is important,
we don’t believe the
way it is currently interpreted tells
the full story. Most conclusions are
missing the link between customers’
instantaneous reactions and the long-
term effect of an experience.
In many cases, there’s a time-span
of weeks, months and even years
between the experience and the
customer’s next interaction with the
company. So how do certain moments
remain fixed in minds bombarded
with millions of messages in the
intervening period, while others
are totally forgotten about? And
how does this affect the customer
relationship?
Understanding and interpreting
customers’ individual experiences with
a company has become increasingly
important in the last few years.
The development of online social
platforms coupled with increased
sophistication in gathering customer
opinion allows companies to get closer
to the actual moment of truth.
Not all experiences are created equal
The normal assumption is that
relationship strength is the sum
of all interactions a customer has
with a company – and thus that all
experiences contribute in the same
way. As a consequence companies
‘‘ Understanding and interpreting customers’
individual experiences with a company
has become increasingly important in the
last few years. The development of online
social platforms coupled with increased
sophistication in gathering customer opinion
allows companies to get closer to the actual
moment of truth.’’
74 MAL 19/17 ISSUE
struggle to reach smart and profitable
investment decisions.
But customers have so many
experiences across a wide spectrum
of touchpoints that they can’t possibly
remember them all. So to give them
an equal weight of importance
and financial commitment seems
unfocused and wasteful. Surely, some
experiences must be more important
than others.
Thanks for the memory
Flying in the face of conventional
thinking, our research challenged the
idea that each customer experience
impacted with equal measure and
therefore played an identical role in
shaping company perception and
long-term loyalty to a company.
We set out to prove that in-the-
moment experience is not the same
as the memory of the experience at a
later point in time. To put it another
way, the impact of a particular
experience on a customer decision
months or years later depends on the
memory of the original experience
rather than the actual experience
itself.