Want to succeed in building a superior customer service experience for customers of all ages? Start by learning the new customer service principles that apply to serving millennial customers (the enormous, important, digitally native generation born 1980-2000), and apply these principles to also help you improve your customer service for your other generations of customers, including the second-biggest generation, the Baby Boomers, Gen X, and even the soon-to-arrive in the marketplace Gen Z. Because all of your customers, in every demographic, are quickly “turning millennial” themselves.
As Christopher Hunsberger, EVP Global Products and Innovation, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, puts it,
Millennial customers are an important group of guests in their own right. But their significance is more than that: They’re a unique group in terms of their impact on the rest of our customer base. The behaviors and expectations of the millennial group of guests tend to shape the thinking of the rest of us.
In other words: while millennial customers may have customer service expectations that look the most unusual and cutting-edge today, the reality is that customers today of all ages are quickly learning to think differently about customer service and the customer experience. And the changes that you should be making today in your customer service and customer experience to please millennials truly will do double duty for your company; it will please not only millennial customers today but actively affect the appreciation of your service experience from all demographics of customers within a very short time. As Ritz-Carlton’s President and COO, Herve Humler, told me recently, “When we develop something at The Ritz-Carlton for our millennial guests, our customers in other demographics want it as well–almost before we’re done rolling it out for the millennials.”
Let’s back up a bit. First of all, who are these millennial customers, and why do we care about them so much “in their own right” as Four Seasons’ Hunsberger puts it?
Millennial customers–born between 1980 and 2000 (give or take)–are the largest generation in both U.S. and world history--even larger than the baby boom at its height. It is estimated that as soon as 2017 they will also bring to your business the greatest spending power of any generation to date.
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. Mobile phones have always been available. The Internet has always been on. These are customers who’ve rarely waited for letters to arrive by mail, who may have never waited in line at the bank, who’ve seldom had their musical choices limited to the radio or what can fit on a mass-marketed. Millennials have grown up at a time when it’s possible to align their shopping with their values—the chance to choose humane, green, fair trade, organic, employee owned and so forth, or not.
But in addition to the value of millennials as customers themselves (because of their sheer numbers and direct economic importance), their preferences and behaviors are increasingly bleeding into the customer behavior of 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. The standard expectation of a 25-year-old customer today will be mirrored in the expectations of her mom and dad as well in a very short time.
For one thing, here's a revolutionary fact about millennials: They get along with their parents. According to Pew, teenagers today get into fewer fights with their parents than Mom and Dad did with theirs as teens. According to authors Joeri Van den Bergh and Mattias Behrer, six out of 10 teens eat with their family four or more nights per week. Incredibly, 85% of teens name one of their parents as their best friend, rather than naming a peer. And more than a third of millennials of all ages say they influence what products their parents buy, what shops and restaurants they visit and what trips they take.
This striking lack of conflict between generations means that millennials can be vital carriers of a business’s commercial message to not only their friends but also their parents. At the rate they’re spreading the word, it won’t be long until almost everyone passes for a millennial, as far as attitude and buying patterns go.
Principles for serving customers who are millennial or who are older but are “turning millennial”–or will be soon
Here are seven principles that will serve you well with millennial customers and adults of all ages who are quickly adopting millennial expectations as customers. These are adapted from my new Forbes Signature Series book, Your Customer Is The Star: How to make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Fall In Love With Your Business
1. Don’t waste their time (or your employees’ time) on busywork. – Don’t fritter away employee hours on activities that an app can better pull off.
Millennials have different ideas of where humans should fit into customer service delivery. If an app or algorithm can deliver what they need, so much the better. Which is one reason most millennials consult their smartphones first–even when they’re in your store and a human – a human paid to assist them – is standing at the ready.
In particular, don’t wear them down by requiring them to contact you for the transactional details I generically refer to as Stupid Stuff™. Don’t force customers to contact you due to your own bad design and lazy implementation. A millennial customer isn’t willing to call you to find out whether and when her order has shipped; she wants to proactively receive an automated, instant confirmation in her in box or on her phone. A millennial will be peeved if he has to call your company’s receptionist to track down your physical (read: GPS-friendly) address because only your PO Box is on your website.
This isn’t to say there’s no role for a human-to-human service interaction or contact. (Far from it.) But the interaction should be at the choice of the customer, not because your systems are sloppy or incomplete.
2. Customer self-determination is key.
Allowing customers to control their own destiny needs to be a component of your new, millennial-friendly service model. Give up old notions of control and replace them with a transparent model that allows, wherever possible, your customer to be in the driver’s seat. Embrace crowdsourcing: You can’t control product ratings, product discussions, or much else, except by providing the most extraordinary customer experience possible and letting your customers, and your critics, hash out their discussions of it in public.
3. The experience matters.
New service models need to focus on helping customers discover and enjoy experiences, not just on getting them, figuratively or literally, from point A to point B. Take, as an example, business travel. According to Jay Coldren, Marriott VP of Lifestyle Brands (“Lifestyle Brands” are hospitality giant Marriott’s most cutting-edge and experiental hotels around the world): “Generation Y views business travel not as a necessary evil but as a perk and an opportunity to view the world.” Embrace and support this worldview and you win their business.
4. Yesterday’s idea of “fast” isn’t fast enough.
Millennials are superb multi-taskers who put a premium value on convenience. Millennials’ internal time clocks and customer expectations are shaped by the instant gratification they’ve grown accustomed to from the online/smartphone experience. Speed and efficiency are of the utmost importance: in how quickly you respond to a customer, ship to a customer, and offer up choices of product or service to a customer.
Emulate Amazon.com here: You’d better have a real-time indication of what is and isn’t in stock; ship immediately, and, perhaps most of all, have a no-hassle return policy.
5. … but leave your customers time and space for breathing.
Nobody gets this one more right than Starbucks. The millennial generation wants their custom-brewed coffee fast (in less than 7 minutes according to Starbucks’ “Cliff of Dissatisfaction” metric) but they also want the world to linger with them over coffee. In spite of their penchant for mobile and online socializing, the millennial generation also yearns for face to face interaction and collaboration – from their peers and, often, from your more empathetic employees.
6. Speak their language.
The new generation is exceedingly informal, and has different words, and methods, of communicating. Jay Coldren from Marriott again: “The 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.” When in doubt, follow this millennial rule: Authentic, caring communication is in; scripted service is out.
7. Your company's values have value.
Millennials engage in what can be termed values-based buying. When millennials do business with a company, they’re more likely than previous generations to care about the social values of that company: its social responsibility, green profile, and how ethically it does, or doesn’t, treat its own employees and those of its suppliers. They will reward your company if its behavior mirrors their own ethics, and punish your company if it doesn’t.
Micah Solomon is a customer experience consultant, customer service speaker, trainer, and bestselling author. His latest book, which covers customer service for the Millennial generation of customers and others, is Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Fall In Love With Your Business
