Do you greet your customers by their name?
Are you receiving complaints on social media?
Technology advancements are creating new ways for businesses to provide outstanding customer service not possible before. Previously a customer service agent never used to address customers by their names but now Millennials expect the agent to know their details well in advance and address them by their very first or last name. Also, complaining about social media is the new buzz that every new age customer is following, as the results of the same are tremendously appreciable.
Millennials are a group of customers who have set pretty high standards for marketers. They are very knowledgeable and forms the largest part of the working force. With their rising expectations from brands to have the best of the offerings, organizations need to think wisely and accordingly design their customer service strategies in order to cater to their demands.
There is a reason why organizations are focusing more on pleasing the Millennial population. Essentially, Millennials are searching for the same experience as of the traditional customers, but want more control, respect, transparency, and reliability on the ongoing service that is being provided to them. However, the million dollar question is about the type of customer service, environment, and experience that will encourage these young consumers to stay loyal to a brand.
Also, Forrester research has shown that “87% of customers said their time was the most important factor when dealing with customer service.” The Millennials want a quick response to the queries through their preferred channel, be it through text-based messages like email and instant message or through an Omni-channel platform. This has also removed the interdependency and potential frustration of customers while trying to contact a brand.
Brands are striving towards building strategies to delight these set of the focused group but are continuously failing in achieving their desired targets. Here are a few insights for you to gain a good understanding of new customer service strategies for Millennial customers:
Omni-Channel: Organizations aiming towards building a profound yet subtle strategy should adopt Omni-channel as a part of their customer service practice. With Omni-channel communications gaining continuous importance every day, organizations should become more agile towards building a customer-centric brand. But in a rush to become more successful, brands have failed to understand the importance of various channels, and hence are ignoring many of their current and potential customers. The new age customer base consists of the Millennial crowd who are making more money and are spending each bit wisely. Therefore, it is necessary to meet their needs along with their communication preference.
Self-Service: Customer’s demand for Self-Service has grown ten times in the past few years. With the evolution of the Millennial crowd, the usage of smartphone devices, improved internet speeds, and phone apps have increased tremendously, which has fuelled the need for self-service. Customers no more seek first contact resolution through calls. The new generation agent needs to be armed with more sophisticated and smart software to provide a quick resolution to the ongoing demand of Millennials. Moreover, telephonic interaction has simply lost its crux, due to long hold times which ultimately leads to customer frustration. Therefore, customer service departments focusing more on self-service can perform better than those following traditional methods of resolving customer queries.
Social Evolution: With social media gaining importance for nurturing customer outreach, contact centers are moving towards a new wave of digitalization. The digitally enabled agents are more focused on providing agile customer experience but factors determining the same have changed tremendously. It is no more a viable option to reply to customer queries on calls and emails. With social evolution, customers have got immense power to express their views on a large scale about your company. Social media is where the new age customers are engaged and that is where organizations should aim to deliver.
Customer Analytics: The trend being followed by organizations to monitor big data & analytics have set them apart from their competition. However, these strategies are of minor importance until the organizations have really improved and measured customer experience. So, what can organizations do towards providing an amazing customer experience? Customer service agents need to adopt the tools and disciplines of successful organizations in order to play a centralized role in the improved experience. Therefore, they need to have deeper insights into customer analytics in order to understand the trend and pattern being followed by new age customers.
Performance Measurement: Customer service strategies should be designed to drive loyalty for maintaining the complete customer experience. Also, the methodology being used for measuring the reward activities should be appropriate. Performance measurement of service was mainly focused on efficiency metrics but in order to drive the relationship building in service, KPI is another field that attracts our complete attention. Minimizing the cost will always be the priority of organization but at the same time, balanced scorecards are required to ensure the right focus on both efficiency and quality of customer experience.
