How Millennials are Shaping the Future of Customer Service

Statistics indicate that millennials are willing to pay 21% more to conduct business with companies who excel at customer service. However, millennial expectations for customer support happen to be different from the generations before them. Contrary to phone or email support, data reveals that up to 63% of millennials begin their customer service interactions online while 43% of those who wish to contact customer service prefer to use their mobile for the purpose.

No wonder, there is great pressure on brands to evolve their customer service experience to match the needs of the ‘always connected’ millennials who form one of the most significant market segments for industries. One mistake, and the millennial generation may turn to the power of social media, causing irreparable damage to a brand’s image. That does not mean that the generation is vicious or over-demanding. Rather, they wish to save time for everyone including themselves, and demand efficient self-service options followed by quick and real-time support, which is not too much to ask for in the times of advanced technologies we live in.

Here are three suggestions for brands who wish to be on the same page as the millennial generation by improving their customer service experience:

Self-Service is Key

The millennials are turning around conventional customer service practices all the time. Instead of calling customer representatives, the digitally savvy generation prefers to do things themselves. That’s why it is vital to build informative FAQ pages and community forums so that the millennials can find the information they need, quickly and easily, to solve their problems on their own.

According to research, 69% of millennials claim to feel good about themselves and the brand when they can solve a problem on their own. That’s a double whammy for your business – less burden on your customer service team so that they can focus on complex issues and happy customers who are willing to serve themselves.

Millennials Love Real-Time and Quick Support

The do-it-yourself generation is used to having everything in a snap – be it booking a cab, ordering a pizza, transferring money, or receiving customer support. According to stats, up to 25% of millennials expect customer service to respond to their queries within 10 minutes. With a customer service platform, you can not only enable real-time support on your website, social media pages, and mobile chat through live chat but also ensure 24/7 connectivity with a customized chatbot for your business.

Chatbots are known to handle up to 80% of your straightforward and repetitive customer queries on their own while learning from every new interaction, thanks to the machine learning algorithms that form their core.

Omnichannel over Multi-Channel

It is a fact that millennial customers use up to six touch-points while interacting with a brand and expect the same level of service on every touch-point that they use. Therefore, while building a multi-channel presence, businesses must also remember to provide seamless and consistent support on each of these channels for better customer experience.

Smartphones, tablets, laptops – the millennials switch between multiple devices at all times, and it is imperative to your success to provide seamless support across all these channels in addition to a responsive, mobile-first website.

Conclusion

Pleasing the millennials is not difficult once you understand what they value, that is, efficient, reliable, and quick customer service. Besides, millennials also demand a higher degree of personalization in their interactions with brands and are willing to share their personal information with them for better and more personalized customer service. To achieve this, you can always integrate your CRM with your customer service platform, such as Acquire.io, that will supplement your existing customer database with more information about each user, such as their browsing history, chat history, product preferences, etc.

Contributed by Sam Makad, an experienced writer and marketing consultant. His expertise lies in marketing and advertising. He helps small & medium enterprises to grow their business and overall ROI. Reach out to Sam Makad on Twitter or LinkedIn.