A customer called yesterday about a delivery and was told someone would look into it. Today they call again. With no memory, the agent opens with “How can I help you?”, and the customer sighs and starts from the beginning. With memory, it can say it knows they called yesterday about the delivery and ask whether the issue is still open.
That is caller memory. It is on by default, which makes it worth understanding before someone rings your line and hears something you did not expect.
What the agent is told
When a known contact calls or is called, the agent gets a short brief of that person's last few calls before its first word. For each one: when it was, who called whom, how it ended and what was said. It also gets any open callback and their latest promise to pay. An unanswered attempt says nothing about the person, so it is left out.
It reads only this contact's own records, in your workspace. It never reads another workspace's. With no number match, there is no contact and no memory. The memory belongs to the contact in your workspace, so another of your agents calling the same person can read those calls too.
A good example and a bad one
On a collections call, it helps a great deal. “You mentioned you would pay on the fifth. Has that gone through?” The agent isn't asking the borrower to explain the situation from scratch, and the call is shorter and calmer for it.
Now picture a different case. A clinic rings a patient's number about a follow-up visit. The patient's brother answers. An agent that opens by mentioning the patient's last visit has shared something it shouldn't have. A shared family phone is ordinary in India, so a number match doesn't tell you who is holding the phone.
The identity check is your control
Switch on the identity check for anything sensitive, with how many wrong answers are allowed. With it on, the agent keeps the brief to itself until the caller is verified, and the promise to pay is left out until then. On a collections template, the check asks the caller to confirm the last four digits of their number before talking about the account.
As a rule of thumb, turn it on for loans, collections, health, insurance and anything where the mere fact of being a customer is private. Leave it off for an order confirmation, where the check would only annoy people. Whichever you choose, run a test where someone else answers and hear what happens.
The settings
- On or off: Remember returning callers is on by default, in Call Settings. An agent or team can set its own.
- How far back: how many past calls the agent remembers, from 0 to 10. Setting it to 0 does the same as switching it off.
- Identity check: on the agent or team, with how many wrong answers are allowed.
More isn't always better. For most jobs the last two or three calls are what matter, and a very long brief gives the agent more to bring up that a caller may find odd.
It depends on call analysis
The summaries it uses come from call analysis. With Call outcome and summary set to Off, past calls carry less to remember, because they have less written down about them. That matters if you switched analysis off to save money and then wondered why the agent seems forgetful. Caller memory itself has no charge, on any plan. The analysis behind it is priced on its own, as the pricing page shows.
How it fits a hand-over
Memory is what the agent knows at the start of a call. A hand-over passes what was said on this call to your person, along with a private brief, and the call card can carry their last calls as well. Between these, a returning customer shouldn't have to start again with either the AI or your staff.
Write the script with memory in mind
A script written for strangers can sound strange to someone who spoke to you yesterday. If an agent opens with a long introduction every time, the memory doesn't help much. Tell it what to do: if you have spoken before, say so briefly and carry on from where you stopped. Then test it. Make two test calls from the same number, one after the other, and listen to the second.
Be plain about one thing in the script too. The brief is for the agent's use, and it doesn't all need saying. Someone being reminded of a promise they made is fine. Someone being read a list of every call they have had with you feels watched.
What stays with you
Deciding what your agents may mention, and when, is your decision. Your own privacy notice stays yours to give. If your business has sensitive categories of customer, go through what a brief could reveal and set the check accordingly. You can read more on what the product does and doesn't do on our security page.