Guest Blog: 7 Tips to Impress Millennials with Your Customer Service
This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Alleli Aspili shares helpful tips on how to successfully provide customer service to millennials and earn their loyalty. - Shep Hyken
Millennials are quickly becoming the largest and most powerful customer demographic in our present day. This social media savvy and techno-dependent new generation of consumers is considered the “game-changing force” in customer service.
Growing up in a digital world, millennials are deemed impatient, demanding and seekers of instant gratification. These young customers bring to the market an entirely new set of expectations, requiring a different customer experience and unique style of customer service.
Providing nothing but the best to match their wants is surely the goal of every business. But how do you make it happen? Here are seven helpful tips on how to succeed in winning the hearts of millennials with your customer service.
Make your transactions automatic and process-based.
Millennials cite technology more than any other factor as defining their generation. Because of their identification with technology, they especially demand appropriate innovations in customer service – automated and process-based operations.
A millennial customer isn’t willing to call you to find out whether and when her order has been shipped; she wants to proactively receive an automated, instant confirmation in her inbox or on her phone. Serving millennials means carefully plotting out the very best implementations of customer-serving digital technology.
Be present in every channel possible.
Be everywhere. Millennials have lived their entire conscious lives immersed in an Internet and Wi-Fi–smartphone enabled world. They want to reach your business in which ever communications channel they choose. Companies must prepare themselves for all types of interactions.
Millennial customers prefer many customer service channels including voice, email, online chat, social media channels, text message and mobile. The more channels available, the more they get satisfied.
Multi-channel communication allows millennials to get service while multi-tasking on their multi-devices and communicating at their convenience.
…including SMS/text messaging and mobile apps.
If companies want to know what millennials want, they need to engage with them. Text messaging and mobile apps are “now” technologies that this generation is in tune with.
While many companies are spending their dollars in traditional advertising and customer service, perhaps companies should also spend their money developing social customer experience initiatives, including text messaging and mobile apps, to get with the kids these days.
Speak their language.
Millennial customers are exceedingly informal and have different words and methods of communicating. According to Jay Coldren, VP of Lifestyle Brands of Marriott International, “Millennials want to converse in their own language, according to their own rules. They speak in tweets, texts and Facebook posts. If you want to reach them, you have to speak in their native tongue. And you have to be completely authentic.”
Be quick, accessible and efficient.
For millennial customers, speed, efficiency and accessibility are the utmost importance. Whether it’s an email exchange or telephone conversation, millennials expect an instant response. As for Twitter, Facebook or online chat, millennials expect the same level of service as experienced on other channels.
Millennial customers are notorious for being “convenience consumers.” They want access to the right information, right products, and right channels anytime and all the time. Thus, customer service needs to be accessible, efficient and fast. If there are barriers or delays, millennials will happily move their business elsewhere, and tell their friends about it along the way.
Show that you’re listening.
Young people are often happy to share what they want or need, especially if they feel that their input will help you personalize and enhance your business. Hear their sentiments to better your products or services. If your customers are most concerned about convenience or reliability, then immediately improve those qualities. Show them that they’ve been heard.
Bring your best game.
You need to bring your very best customer experience game to these young customers because millennials will settle for nothing less.
Millennial customers share what they like, including great customer service experiences. It’s important for companies to provide engaging and compelling customer interactions. Customer service providers need to focus on helping customers discover and enjoy experiences, not just on getting them. Making customer experiences sharable has the potential to boost brand sentiment, potentially leading to new customers.
I hope these tips will help you in delivering the best customer service to the biggest customer generation ever – the millennials!
Alleli Aspili is a Senior Specialist for Business Development in Infinit Outsourcing, Inc., an ISO-certified BPO company that caters SMEs. She is responsible for maintaining Infinit-O, Infinit Contact, Infinit Healthcare and Infinit Accounting online brand and content. While out of work, you can still see her in front of her computer – learning more about marketing. She’s an internet and social media geek.
For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com
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