Oct 1, 2022
When it comes to the behavioral sciences, I love their take on memory. I love it so much, that we did a podcast mini-series on it in three parts.
In the first part, we talked about why memories are essential to experiences, when we use them to decide sometimes, and how memories form.
The second part covered how memories are connected and the different types of memories we have.
In this final episode of the memory mini-series, we explore how we store, retrieve, and forget memories.
Why all this hullabaloo about memory? Simply put, I think too many organizations underestimate the significance of the effects customers’ memories have on their bottom line. Memories are essential to experiences. They connect us to our past and drive our behavior in the present. In many ways, memories define us.
Memory is also essential to customer loyalty and retention. Nobel-Prize-Winning economist Professor Daniel Kahneman explained it all to me ten years ago and I never forgot: customers don’t choose between experiences; they choose between the memories of an experience.
In this episode, we discuss how we retrieve, store, and forget memories. However, we also talk about what you can do with this information to ensure that when customers are sorting through their memories of your experience, they come back for more every time.
Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience
In our Memory Maker Training, we cover the importance of memories to your experience and how to train your employees to create excellent and lasting ones of your experience. This training builds upon your choice of the experience you want to deliver customers, whether that’s making them feel valued or cared for or something else in that moment. These memories are reinforced by the words, phrases, body language and tone used by your team.
Here are a few key moments in the discussion:
- 04:01 Ryan gets the discussion started by going over how our minds store memories and the influences on that process.
- 12:12 We learn how SOHCAHTOA from trigonometry is an excellent example of mnemonic devices that help us remember things and why.
- 13:57 Colin explains how an app called What Three Words uses an easier to remember way to pinpoint your location than coordinate numbers.
- 16:05 We discuss the Zeigarnik Effect and how it helps us retrieve memories, along with some other interesting tools.
- 26:41 We discuss how we sometimes misremember things, as studied by Elizabeth Loftus and presented on her TED Talk.
- 31:24 Ryan and I get into the “So what?” of memory and how you can apply what you have learned practically in your customer strategy.
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Customer Experience Information & Resources
LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.
Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers.
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