Ba-dee-ya, say, do you remember?
Why the next breakthrough in customer experience won’t be a smarter bot — it’ll be a system that remembers what mattered.
7 a.m. My phone buzzed.
A message popped up from a customer I’d helped before:
“It’s happening again…”
No screenshot. No form. No context. Just that.
And instantly, I knew who it was, what it was about, and what I’d promised them last time.
I remembered how it ended.
What we fixed.
What we said we’d do next.
So I replied: “On it.”
That was it. No questions. No backtracking.
Just continuity.
And that’s when it hit me—
This is what great customer experience actually is.
Not slick scripts.
Not clever automation.
Just…remembering.
Remembering what mattered to someone last time.
The Moment the System Breaks
Every day, we talk about how “smart” our systems have become.
They sound human.
They’re polite.
They’re trained to empathise.
But there’s one thing they still fail at, and it breaks the whole illusion.
It’s when the customer comes back, and the system behaves as if they’ve never met.
“Can I get your account number?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t see a record of that.”
“Can you explain the issue again?”
And in that moment… everything we’ve built collapses.
Because when people have to repeat themselves, they stop trusting you.
When you forget them, they feel small.
And once that happens, you’ve lost something you can’t buy back with tech.
Trust.
The Most Human Kind of Intelligence
In neuroscience, there’s a concept called episodic memory — the ability to recall events in sequence, with emotional context.
It’s how you remember your first job interview.
Your first heartbreak.
Your last argument.
Not as data points… but as a story.
Episodic memory is what makes us human.
And it’s the one thing missing from how most brands operate.
When a customer reaches out, they’re not picking up where your CRM left off.
They’re picking up where their story left off.
That’s why I believe the next frontier of customer experience isn’t intelligence.
It’s memory.
What Its Like to Be Remembered
Every Monday, I speak with Boardy.ai, an “AI superconnector” that learns my goals and introduces me to relevant people through double-opt-in intros.
It listens, takes notes, and acts on what I share.
On our third check-in, it asked a question I’d answered the week before.
I said, “I already answered that.”
It paused, “thought,” and then pulled back my previous response.
And in that pause, something shifted.
Because it remembered.
It didn’t just process information. It respected context.
That’s the power of memory design. It creates a sequence of episodes that the system can reference later.
When it remembered my answer, it wasn’t showing off.
It was applying a simple slice of episodic memory to keep the thread.
The Real Cost of Forgetting
Think about how often this happens in your own business.
A customer complains twice about the same issue.
A refund is promised but never recorded.
A note gets lost between teams.
We call those “process failures.”
But they’re not.
They’re memory failures.
And the impact is emotional, not operational.
Because when a customer feels forgotten, it’s not just the system that looks bad.
It’s your brand.
A Vision Worth Building
Now picture this:
A system starts a chat with you and says,
“Last time we spoke, you mentioned this wasn’t resolved—should we revisit it?”
Both sides can see a shared timeline of key moments.
The customer can edit or hide details because consent matters.
And brands follow up based on promises, not predictions.
That’s not the future.
That’s what your customers already expect.
Questions CX Leaders Should Be Asking
Most of us in CX don’t own the tech stack.
But we shape the agenda.
So start by asking:
Are we capturing customer moments as structured memories—or just transcripts?
Can our systems recall what was promised, and by whom?
Do we track changes in tone or emotion across conversations?
Can customers see what we remember about them—and correct it?
Who owns memory in our business?
These questions aren’t technical.
They’re cultural.
Because culture is how memory scales.
Then, instead of asking: “How do we automate more?”
Ask, “How do we remember better?”
The most human thing your system can do is simply pick up where the last conversation left off.
That means:
Remembering what was promised
Tracking emotion, not just sentiment
Seeing continuity, not cases
Owning memory, not just data
It sounds small.
But it’s everything.
So here’s one more question to take back to your team:
Where does our system lose the thread?
Find that moment.
And ask yourself—what would change if you remembered just two more things about every customer?
Report back.
Ba-dee-ya, say, do you remember?
What Successful CX Leaders Do on Sundays
DCX Links: Six must-read picks to fuel your leadership journey delivered every Sunday morning. Dive into the latest edition now!
👋 Let’s Talk
I didn’t create this newsletter to just push out ideas. I created it because I believe the people building experiences — the ones in the trenches, solving real problems — don’t get nearly enough space to think, reflect, and connect.
And if I’m honest… the part that matters most to me isn’t the writing. It’s you — the person reading it.
So if something in here resonated, challenged you, or even just made you pause — I’d love to hear from you.
Got feedback? Tell me what landed, what didn’t, or what you wish I’d cover next.
Facing a tough challenge? Reach out. Whether it’s strategy, team dynamics, or just feeling stuck — let’s talk it through.
Just want to say hey? Please do. I genuinely enjoy connecting with people who care about this work as much as I do.
No ego. No fluff. Just real conversations with real people trying to build better things.
DMs, emails, comments — they’re always open.
— Mark
www.marklevy.co
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