We’re willing to bet you’ve heard about millennials before. How could you not? A study in the US says millennials outnumber the baby boomer generation, so if you’ve been rolling your eyes and muttering about how this generation don’t ‘get it’, it might be time to change that attitude and get on board with their expectations — especially when it comes to customer service.
A millennial is someone born between 1980 and 2000, so they’re generally quite young and part of the generation that first started using digital space, the internet and smartphones. Their exposure to the world has been almost completely different to generations before them and, consequently, how they interact with people and deal with problems is different. How? Well, let’s discuss…
Talk to the hand
Technology in the service industry has largely been focused around a DIY philosophy for several years. From self-service tills to touch-screen fast track ordering in restaurants, apps like the Starbucks mobile order service and services like Netflix: the customer is expecting to be hands on and independent. This is partly due to all the practice they have with online shopping — a medium that is growing more and more every year. Millennials don’t require face-to-face customer service as much as previous generations. That’s not to say they won’t look for in-person customer service, but they do have a different idea of what situation requires personal attention. If there’s an app or a website that can help them instead, that’s their first port of call.
Generation Y (another name for millennials) is looking to take charge of their own services as much as possible. Talking to someone face-to-face is not how they want to engage with your business. Allowing the customer to get through their transaction independently can be a way to retain their customer for next time. BUT: that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be trying to engage with your customers. You just need to make sure you know how they are expecting you to do it.
They set the time and place
‘Place’ doesn’t just refer to physical presence, but also digital presence. There was once a time where having a computer in your house meant you were at the forefront of consumer technology. Most millennials don’t remember that time. Generation Y are adept at using multiple devices at once, switching between laptop, phone, tablet, smart watch and TV an average of 27 times per hour. They expect your business to be accessible through all these devices, so to stay up to date you’ll need to create a responsive web presence.
Millennials expect your business to be digitally accessible, with minimum expectations being Facebook and Twitter. At the end of the day, you can’t wait for them to come to you; you have to bring your business to them.
The time is right here, right now
They may set the time, but the time is always ‘immediately’. Older generations think millennials are impatient, but it’s not really impatient to want things done within the time that it is possible to have them done. For example, if someone were to write to a business 30 years ago, it would not be unreasonable to get a reply the week after. Now that the technology exists for a reply to be instantaneous, we should be expecting this sort of timing. A study found that millennials like to communicate with businesses on their own terms, using technology they are accustomed to such as SMS, e-mail or social media. Other research claimed 71% of online customers think the most important thing a brand can do is value their customers’ time. 52% of shoppers will abandon online purchases if they can’t find answers to questions fast enough. So don’t expect millennials to wait for you!
Their way or the highway
A key difference between millennials and those of you who need to read about millennials is the former have a lot less loyalty towards a business. Half of millennials leave a business every year, and 25% of millennials will leave a company after just one bad experience. A huge 82% will stop using a company after three bad experiences so if you aren’t offering top-notch service and — more importantly — aren’t addressing the issues your customers have, you’ll lose them.
It also means there will be a lot more poaching of customers as businesses know millennials are fickle. For instance, if a customer refers a friend at Nationwide, they offer £100 to both the new customer and the referrer. £100 didn’t seem like a lot of money to change banks a few years ago (inflation considered), but it’s ample motivation for a millennial who hasn’t had an ideal experience with their bank.
Don’t expect just to lose the one customer, either. One study found that 22% of customers will share that they have had a negative experience on social media, and despite this, one third of customer service enquires made on social media do not receive a response. On the other side of the same coin, 22% would also share their good experiences on social media. Millennials have changed ‘word of mouth’ marketing forever.
They don’t belong in one box
For all our analysis on how you should treat millennials, one of the worst things you can do is assume they are all the same. In a study by the Boston Consulting Group, researchers say that non-millennials tend to see millennials as ‘lazy’ and ‘entitled’, but this generalisation can prevent businesses from properly understanding and being able to accommodate this generation.
The study claimed millennials comprise of six distinct segments:
- Hip-ennial — information hungry, globally aware, mostly female, below-average employment
- Gadget Guru — confident, wired, owns several tech devices
- Clean and Green Millennial — cause driven, contributor of content, impressionable, positive
- Millennial Mom — wealthy, family orientated, high social media interaction, digitally savvy
- Anti-Millennial — conservative, seeks comfort more than thrills, less green
- Old-School Millennial — Not so tech savvy, cautious consumer, independent, less online presence
Of course even this list generalises millennials too much, but it could be a useful guide to establish the market you want to target. Essentially, generation Y need you to have a digital presence and for you to accommodate their expectations. You can no longer expect to have long lines and multi-level customer service without losing the potential economic powerhouse that is the millennial generation.
