It’s easy (and lazy) to generalize about what Gen Z wants. It’s a big group of people, and they’re only associated because of when they were born. They’re not all alike, and don’t all want the same thing.
But as this generation enters the workforce and becomes customers, businesses must consider the expectations of digital natives when it comes to customer service.
What Gen Z (and the millennials before them) want from their jobs and their interactions with businesses is what we all want: for things to work properly, to be quick and easy and to feel like they’re being helped, not hindered.
No one wants work to be harder or more difficult. No one wants processes to take longer than necessary, or for systems to work less efficiently. People want a consumer-grade experience everywhere, whether from the organization they work for or the organizations they do business with.
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The one thing the younger generations do have in common is the influence of technology on their lives, and an expectation that it will work for them. Digital natives have little time or patience for technology that requires them to work harder.
This means your customer service agents expect an interface that’s easy to use and – crucially – is properly integrated with the rest of your systems.
Customer service should not exist in isolation from the rest of the organization, and if there’s one thing digital natives understand, it’s the benefits of connecting things. They’ve grown up in an increasingly connected world, where their phone is their bank card and they can control their central heating from their tablet. They expect work to be the same.
Integration is key to creating this outcome. Integrating service into the organization means that case management becomes a way of solving problems rather than just handling them. This requires connecting agents with colleagues from outside of service: if expertise from other departments is needed to solve the problem, agents should be able to find it without huge amounts of time and effort.
An efficient case management system will automatically find the right people, create a ticket and assign the job – tasks that could take an agent hours are completed in minutes.
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Digital natives are used to information coming to them, rather than having to find it. Social media and apps constantly update us, news is streamed everywhere, and with this comes impatience with slow or ungainly processes.
Service agents don’t want to read a paper manual. They want to find the information they need on their desktop, using a powerful search function. AI-powered knowledge management, using machines to find answers and information from the entire organization, gives agents the power to deliver solutions quickly.
Customers are the same. They expect service to keep them updated on the progress of their case, and don’t want to have to repeatedly call to find out.
By not doing this, you’re making the customer do the work. As Philip Jenkins, a senior director analyst at Gartner says: “reactive service experiences place the burden on customers to find the best channel for resolution, whether it’s to check on the status of a request, conduct a transaction or troubleshoot a repair issue.”
Gartner also predicts that proactive “customer engagement interactions” will outnumber reactive ones by 2025.
Regardless of age, upbringing or familiarity with technology, everyone appreciates being kept informed, and it becomes a point of difference between competitors – especially when goods and services become commoditized and bought on price alone. Service can make the difference between repeat business and no more business.
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are hard won, but proactive customer service can assure your brand never goes out of style.
It’s also worth mentioning that in the rush to satisfy the customer service expectations of a younger generation, it’s easy to overlook the habits of an older one. Many older customers don’t want to use self-service channels, social media, and SMS, so understanding preferences at an individual level is vital.
This isn’t an either/or situation – it’s about improving service for everybody. What digital natives want and expect is good for all customers and employees, and what’s good for them is good for business, too.
