Customer Service Expectations - Part 1

I am always thinking about customer service - the good and the bad - and I was looking at customer service videos and images and I was reminded of the following information:

60% of Baby Boomers want excellent customer service

71% of Gen X want excellent customer service

77% of Millennials require excellent customer service.....!!!!!!!

Because, they way I see it, why are many more young people / millennials than more mature staff so bad at customer service if they expect it more than their previous generations? We can see why from last weeks blog on Power Skills and how Gen Zers are wanting support with it - but to expect it more?

Whenever I go into a shop to buy something, it's always the more mature people I head to from previous experience. Why, I hear you say? Well, most of the time young people are more interested in catching up with what happened at the weekend or talking about plans of the weekend, or the latest video on TikTok rather than greeting me and asking if I need help. Not only that - but now I really am entering grumpy old person territory - but I can never quite work out what they have said as they generally don't speak clearly or audibly. 

I thought about the statistic some more and realised I totally get Boomers want less of a customer experience, because they grew up in a time when there was little choice and you got what you were given. Businesses did not have to compete for customers then as there was little competition; businesses were small shops and everyone worked with everyone else. With the rise of supermarkets and large national brands and mail order .... and now the internet, that has changed. 

With businesses competing with each other for market share, of course Millennials are used to shopping around for the best deals and sticking with a brand that gives them a great experience for their hard earned money and especially at the moment with the cost of living crisis. Not only that, we know Millennials love experiences in their lives and this includes customer experience, or, they will move to another brand that does that. And customer experience need not be the interaction with a person, it can also be brand values too that keep Millennials with a brand or moving to another brand.

Next week, revisit this site to look at the importance or not in this case of the competition and why the worlds biggest brand agrees!