“Your perception, however instantaneous, consists then in an incalculable multitude of remembered elements; and in truth every perception is already memory. Practically we perceive only the past, the pure present being the invisible progress of the past gnawing into the future.”

- Henri Bergson, from Matter and Memory

I was reading a novel from Haruki Murakami, called Kafka on the shore, and there came the above quote from Henri Bergson out of the mouth of a prostitute in a bed scene of the book. And of course, all I could think about at that time was… Damn! That sounds like something that can relate to customer experience! (And a lot of other things as well actually)

In customer experience, the concept of perception is key, as a customer perceives a company, perceives a product, perceives a service, perceives a support staff. From their perception, the experience is formed. It is not so much the reality that matters, but the perception people have of it.

And that fact creates a lot of problem in customer research. If we want to study experiences, we cannot study facts. We need to understand the perception of reality people have instead. This perception is rooted in people’s unconscious mind and directly probing people usually only ends up in getting an incomplete or even misleading picture of their perception. When we recall memories, the brain selects a representation of that reality.

As Henri Bergson states:

“In any case, in perception, there is a transition from the image as being in itself to its being for me. But, perception adds nothing new to the image; in fact, it subtracts from it. Representation is a diminution of the image; the transition from image to pure perception is “discernment in the etymological sense of the word,” a “slicing up” or a “selection” (Matter and Memory, p. 38). According to Bergson, selection occurs because of necessities or utility based in our bodies. In other words, conscious representation results from the suppression of what has no interest for bodily functions and the conservation only of what does interest bodily functions.”

I am quite amazed that Henri Bergson who lived from 1859 to 1941 was so ahead of his time and discussing problems that we only start today to understand. In high school, philosophy was the class I hated the most (yes, in France we have philosophy classes in the last year of high school). It is amazing actually how philosophy can actually relate to the real world…