Millennials Want Genuine Interaction With, and Around, Businesses: Enter WebRTC Video Chat
If you don’t think the Millennial generation has made a mark on the wider world by now, go ask your neighborhood bartender. If you still have a neighborhood bar, that is.
Over the past decade more than 10,000 bars and nightclubs across America have closed, and experts say it’s due in large part to a generational shift in the way people socialize. The Millennials, the largest generation in U.S. history, favor unique, intimate, and socially-driven experiences. Nightclubs are too noisy and impersonal for talking, and bars too static an environment. And so many traditional watering holes are drying up, while venues that promote dining, craft beers, specialty liquors, and even board games proliferate.
While that’s quite a profound societal change in its own right, it’s minor compared to what’s happening online. As the first digitally native generation also becomes the biggest spending generation, even the largest companies in the world are starting to change the way they exist online in order to avoid the fate of the neighborhood bar.
Millennials and Live Interaction Online
According to Gartner, 100 of the world’s 500 largest companies will have video-based chat for customer-facing services as of next year.
Why?
They’re trying to accommodate the habits of a Millennial generation that wants personal, ‘human’ interaction online.
Nearly a third of the viewed content is created by Millennials’ peers, and they favor peer-produced content because of its authenticity and its obvious social connection. That sentiment, however, makes it difficult for any business to earn their respect and interest. It’s rare to find ads or promotions — or even customer service — that feels truly genuine and personal.
Which is where the live video chat comes in.
Opening Up to the World
The easiest way to make a social connection is to start a conversation. Even if that conversation isn’t always pleasant.
Several companies have launched online social awareness campaigns in order engage with their audience beyond the point of sale.
Italian oil and energy company Eni uses its website to discuss broad social issues, such as the future of global energy consumption, or the ways its foundation contributes to Italian cultural causes and healthcare in Africa.
Others prefer to let the customer start the conversation.
Starbucks’ My Starbucks Idea website is an open forum for the franchise’s fans, or critics, to post their own vision of future flavors, products, technologies, locations and in-store music. There’s even a “likes” leaderboard to give things a little competitive edge.
What’s most important here is that these online audiences have an avenue to directly engage with the company. That desire for engagement typifies the Millennial approach to the online world. Millennials prefer to solve problems themselves, and, consistent with their frequent usage of text messaging for social interaction, are comfortable using text messaging with customer service staff. However, text message is at best a limited form of communication, even for a chat-native generation. For nuanced questions and technical solutions, where more information must be exchanged, millennials want the simplest solution: asking someone face to face.
The holy grail of Millennial communication is omnichannel capabilities, which allow users to text, chat, call, or videoconference as they deem appropriate. Companies which understand these preferences and offer omnichannel capabilities in the true sense of the word, including video, will come off as more thoughtful, approachable, and engaging to their Millennial audience than their neighbors in the industry. With WebRTC’s widely available open-source video communications platform available, companies are now more able to engage face-to-face than ever before.
WebRTC Conversation
Now that Millennials are a market force, companies will first have to embrace the demographic’s self-help nature by making instructional and advice content available on demand, and making it possible to stream it right into a live, group social media platform, so that several people can work through online uncertainty the same way they seek advice in the real world. It’s crowdsourcing, among friends. The WebRTC tech already exists to introduce such third-party content seamlessly into a shared social network. WebRTC is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Android, and iOS, and is parented by Google, Mozilla, and Opera, making it multi-platform solution with an established network of support for developers using the system.
Next, companies will have to provide a way for users to speak their minds and ask questions. If Millennials value authenticity and engagement, they’ll be turned off by any company that hides behind static feedback forms. Nestlé has won praise for openly, and publicly, confronting the more controversial aspects of its operations on its own website, though it uses a low-tech format of published consumer Q&A. The company could earn even more points,and perhaps begin to develop a more genuine relationship and sense of community with customers, by using a WebRTC platform to hold live debates or town hall-style events that would allow any customer to join virtually.
That leads us to our next ‘must’ for today’s companies — they’ll have to accommodate the conversations that go on around them. There are a clutch of sites, such as Appear.In, that already let users gather instantly in anonymous, disposable video and messaging chat rooms. Companies that offer a built-in platform for customers to gather and discuss their products — or to initiate a live, face-to-face customer service or tech support calls — will be a step ahead when it comes to serving Millennials. A video social media platform utilizing WebRTC tech and allowing media streaming also opens up ways for companies to build community around their brand by enabling rooms where like-minded customers can discuss a topic or product either through video or text chat. This could create a living, more natural version of the forums and message boards where product users currently give each other advice, modification tips, and on-the-ground insight.
And finally, the WebRTC future will provide places to just hang out and enjoy whatever live multimedia content suits an online group of friends. Think of it like a virtual cinema or concert venue, where a company can express its personality and core values (and up its cool factor) by offering free entertainment in support of a cause, or just for the fun of it. A company might even use its WebRTC platform to offer a two-way experience in which consumers could take a class via video chat, or offer their views through an online public forum.
These are the sites that will survive the Millennial shift, and become platforms for discussion, consumption, and genuine socializing.
