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Millennial Customers Driving Companies to Alter How They Offer Customer Support

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Millennial Customers Driving Companies to Alter How They Offer Customer Support

 
December 31, 2014

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  By Tracey E. Schelmetic, TMCnet Contributor
 


While there certainly are some tried-and-true business practices that can be successfully carried forward over years or decades, too many companies allow their processes to age until they’re no longer suitable for today. Most of these processes that are ever-changing involve people: customer, specifically.


“If the way you’ve always approached customer service isn’t working for you anymore, it’s probably because your customers have changed,” wrote Forbes’ Micah Solomon. “They’re buying (or deciding not to), raving about your customer service (or telling their friends to avoid you), enhancing (or depressing) your bottom line based on factors your business may have never considered.”

Customers today are on multiple channels, sometimes more than one at the same time. They’re on social media, sharing their experiences with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of others. They’re doing their own research, helping each other out in online forums and making buying decisions based on other customers’ experiences. Marketing, which used to be a one-to-many process, is now increasingly a one-to-one process. Customers expect personalized buying experiences, and personalized marketing efforts from the companies they do business with. These changes might be dismissed as a trend now, but with the up and coming millennial generation, they will become the norm, and businesses had best be ready for them.

“Millennials’ expectations as customers have been shaped by the generation’s lifetime immersion in the fast-evolving worlds of online commerce, search engines and on-the-go connectivity,” wrote Solomon.

This generation has always had the Internet, email and chat. They have been carrying smartphones since they were children or teenagers. They have grown used to being able to customize their entertainment and their news, and they socialize at least as much online as they do offline. They are accustomed to multitasking across multiple channels. Finally, they have no patience for waiting in line, either in person or on the telephone. Businesses not prepared to accommodate them will be in grievous trouble in the years to come.

For many companies, this will mean revamping their customer service processes, possibly to the point of throwing out their old systems and doing a rip and replace. Customer service software solutions that do not allow for easily integrated multiple channels, a true mobile experience, personalization and social media integration will offer nothing millennial customers want. Companies still struggling to try and integrate channels or presenting customers with long hold times will be dismissed as “grandparent” companies.

According to Forbes’ the Millennials preferences as customers are even spreading to older generations.

“In other words, if you’re in business today, it makes good economic sense to focus on millennial customer expectations because millennials’ purchasing power is so valuable (and growing), and also because their digitally driven expectations are spreading so quickly to other generations,” wrote Solomon.

It simply makes sense to focus on younger customers’ preferences. Not only are they the future, but their ideas about how they should be able to interact with companies are contagious. 




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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