Generations shaping customer experience: Millennials versus Gen Z

How should businesses adapt their CX across various generations?

When a company creates its business and corporate strategy, it must conduct extensive research not only on its competitors and market environment but also on generations’ attitudes. Since they have different traits, companies should always aim toward improving and tailoring their strategies and CX to match these customers’ needs and expectations.

Companies are now turning their attention toward Generation Z since they are a huge market segment for any business. More specifically, as of 2019, they comprise for more than 30% of the population, which makes them the largest generation worldwide. Millennials are the other huge market group that represents the biggest adult population and has already surpassed the Boomers. These numbers force companies to adapt their CX around these generations’ needs.

There are several things that companies could do to grab Gen Z’s and Millennials’ attention and win their loyalty as customers. Gen Z includes the people born in the period from 1997 to 2010. These individuals are a symbol of diversity and share the qualities of being prudent and innovative. Moreover, they have grown up with technology and the Internet which makes them digitally oriented. The millennial generation (born from 1981 to 1996) is also tech-savvy, despite not being surrounded by technology while growing up.

How do these new generations of customers change traditional CX, and how could their expectations be met by organizations?

• Gen Z-ers and Millennials expect more empathy than ever before. The aftermath of the Covid-19 events has mainly influenced Gen Z customers and forever changed their CX expectations, according to a Customer Experience Trends Report. This is due to the severe disruption of this generation’s educational, career, and social needs caused by the pandemic. However, Millennials’ customer service expectations have also altered. More than 50% of Millennials and 47% of Gen Z have stated that they cared about the quality of the CX provided by a company more in 2021, compared to the previous 2020. Even though they have high standards, Gen Z-ers have higher levels of tolerance for poor CX in comparison to Millennials. More than 50% of Millennials said that they would change the company after just one negative CX interaction, compared to 23% of Gen Z-ers. However, both generations find negative experiences with support specialists frustrating, so a company must always aim to be helpful and tolerant.
• Both generations are more tech-savvy than their parents. However, Millennials still prefer communication on traditional customer support channels (email and/or phone), while Gen Z-ers are much more active Internet and mobile users, who rely heavily on their mobile devices. Thus, businesses should strengthen the CX they offer across their online channels. Gen Z members expect everything to happen fast and to be personalized specifically for their needs. They also feel comfortable contacting customer support the same way they contact their friends – through social media platforms. Therefore, a company should adapt to this behavior by offering new digital alternatives to appeal to younger customers.

No matter the age and the generation, all customers want to feel valued, understood and taken care of. Thus, a company could never go wrong by expressing compassion to its customers and by offering them a seamless experience through multiple channels. Because providing superb CX requires an element of empathy, along with putting the customer first when it comes to their needs and preferences.

We at Pontica have been meeting the expectations of our clients’ highly demanding customers by personalizing our approaches and delivering omnichannel CX. Our people-oriented team is concentrated on quality and assures high customer satisfaction. Discover more about our multichannel and multilingual services, and contact us to learn how we can best support your business needs!