What is the Eddy Effect™?

Picture a canoe trip down a river. A fallen log stops the current cold, and the water has nowhere to go but in circles. That swirl is called an eddy.

Your customers get stuck in eddies too.

The Eddy Effect™ happens when a customer’s expected experience hits an obstacle they can’t get past. Instead of moving forward, they’re stuck: calling back again and again, no closer to a resolution than the first time they reached out.

Here’s what that sounds like:

“I’ve called and called and called. I need to know when I’m going to get my medication.”

“They said someone would look into it and get back to me. It’s been a week, and here I am calling you guys again.”

That’s an Eddy. And it’s costing your organization more than you think.

How an Eddy Forms

Every Eddy follows the same pattern, and it gets worse each time it repeats.

1. Feeling: The customer hits a problem and reacts emotionally to it.

“I received the wrong prescription in the mail. Now I’m late taking my medicine.”

2. Seeking Understanding: They try to make sense of what happened, often filling in the gaps with their own theory.

“Did my doctor send the wrong prescription, or did the pharmacy get it wrong?”

3. Continued Confusion: They call support looking for answers. More often than not, they hang up without one.

“The agent said someone would follow up in a few days. It’s been a week. I need my prescription now.”

Repeat: Without resolution, the cycle starts over, and the customer’s frustration compounds each time.

“I’ve called three times and gotten three different answers. This is a mess, and I’m the one stuck dealing with it.”

Why Eddies Matter

Eddies aren’t just a bad experience. They’re a measurable drain on your business.

In one analysis of a top-five health insurer’s mail-order pharmacy calls, 30% of contact center volume traced back to Eddies, driven by delivery complaints, IVR confusion, order cancellations, and members running out of medication before their refill arrived. Resolving them uncovered $792,000 in wasted monthly spend.

For healthcare organizations, every repeat call is a signal: something in the member or patient journey broke down, and no one caught it in time.

Spotting Eddies Before They Spiral

The fix isn’t more agents fielding repeat calls. It’s catching the disruption at the source.

That means listening to conversations at scale, flagging the moments where sentiment drops and issues go unresolved, and getting that insight to the teams who can actually fix the process, not just the call.

To learn moreo about how these insights can be used to drive change for healthcare leaders, visit our website.