Gen Z 🧒🏼 VS Baby Boomers 👵🏻: Should You Treat Them Differently?

Olleh 👋

That's Hello backwards for those who were wondering.

This week's newsletter is an absolute B-A-N-G-E-R 💥. Medallia just released a report which reveals customers expectations for the contact centre across 4 different generations:

• Gen Z: ages 11-26

• Millennials: ages 27-42

• Gen X: ages 43-58

• Baby Boomers: ages 59-77

The research was completed in October 2022, and included >1000 respondents who had interacted with a company's customer support team in the previous 6 months.

To save you the hassle, we've read the full report and have highlighted the most interesting stats below. Enjoy 🤠

Gen Z 🧒🏼 VS Baby Boomers 👵🏻: Should You Treat Them Differently?

According to research recently completed by Medallia, contact preferences definitely vary by generation.

Here are the facts:

FINDING 1: More than 50% of Baby Boomers prefer to reach out to customer service directly, compared with 32% and 34% of Millennial & Gen Z consumers respectively.

FINDING 2: Talking to a person is the #1 preferred channel for Baby Boomers, whereas using online or mobile chat is the preferred channel for Gen Z & Millennial customers.

FINDING 3: Millennials are 2x more likely than Baby Boomers to say that a recent interaction with a chatbot or automated IVR was helpful.

FINDING 4: Only 17% of Baby Boomers say that the chatbot or automated IVR was able to resolve their issue in their last interaction. This is significantly lower compared to Gen Z (50%) and Millennials (43%).

FINDING 5: Baby Boomers & Gen X are more likely to prefer a call back (71%) compared to Millennials (63%) and Gen Z (59%). Gosh these young people are needy!

Customer Preferences: Speed To Answer & Wait Times ⏰

FINDING 6: 60% of consumers are only willing to spend 10 minutes or less on a company’s website to find an answer before taking another action.

FINDING 7: 58% of respondents say that it's reasonable to wait up to 5 minutes in order to speak to a contact centre representative.

FINDING 8: The most important consideration that customers have when trying to contact customer service is to get a human response. Further proof that phone calls are still King 🤴🏽. Take that, ChatGPT!

Solicited VS Observed Customer Feedback 📣

FINDING 9: 73% of respondents say that they would like to be given the chance to share feedback about their customer service experiences. Interestingly, the top 3 channels to share feedback were via online reviews, emails & SMS.

FINDING 10: 41% of customers advised that they use feedback mechanisms to primarily provide positive feedback, compared to 13% negative. This showcases the inherent bias of customers to provide positive solicited feedback.

Conclusion

If you're still reading this far, check out this cool tool we built using chatGPT. It automatically turns qualitative text (customer emails, webchats, social responses) into quantitative results (CSAT, NPS, Effort):