What is customer experience, really?

My favorite definition comes from Bruce Temkin:

“The perception that customers have of their interactions with an organization.” 

That one word “perception” changes everything.

The Hidden Variable in Every Call 

In the contact center, two people can go through the same exact process, hear the same words, get the same resolution, and walk away feeling totally different. 

One person may feel heard. The other may feel dismissed. 

One may feel loyal. The other frustrated. 

That’s perception. And it’s shaped by more than what’s said or done on the call. It’s shaped by the entire customer experience leading up to that point.  

Maybe they have a product that didn’t work at a critical time. Maybe they already tried a digital channel. Maybe they’ve bounced around. Maybe they didn’t even want to call in the first place. 

By the time someone reaches a human, their perception can already be formed and often, it’s not great. 

Why This Makes Live Calls So Hard 

Let’s be honest: call centers weren’t traditionally built for this level of nuance.

Most are set up to route calls based on intent, “I want to buy something,” “I have a billing problem,” “I need to cancel.” So, you group agents into skills-based queues, give them training and tools, and try to match the issue with the solution.

But here’s the challenge: perception doesn’t always follow intent. It’s personal. It’s contextual. It’s the question behind the question.

It’s invisible in the data unless you know where to look. And the data is often not available in the call center, especially when a customer moves among other channels before making a call.

Perception is a Factor We Can’t Ignore 

The contact center is often the last stop in someone’s journey and the best chance to fix a broken perception of the customer’s interactions with a company.

That’s a lot of pressure.

But it’s also an opportunity. If we understand how unique and subjective every call really is, we can stop optimizing just for efficiency and start designing for impact.

It doesn’t mean adding more steps. It means helping agents do what they’re already trying to do: make someone feel heard, understood, and taken care of.

One perception at a time.