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“Please hold” has officially been canceled. That’s one takeaway from a major new survey by Gartner. Nearly half of Gen Z customers will simply hang up when asked to hold on to a call. But that’s just one way that generational change is remaking the customer service industry.
As the founder of a platform for customer service, I’ve seen up close how attitudes toward technology and brand loyalty — and certainly hold times — are evolving. Even chatbots are in the crosshairs. One Gen Z team member summed things up nicely: “When a chatbot sends me a link to a company’s Frequently Asked Questions page, I feel like saying, ‘Don’t make me do the work, just give the answer!'”
There’s a larger paradigm shift here — and not just for “kids these days.” Everyone is learning to expect more from customer service. We used to automatically meet businesses on their home turf (we’d conform to their hours, their procedures, their language, etc.). But now we expect businesses to meet us where we are.
For companies, that presents a challenge. They’ve already thrown millions of people at the customer service problem, and yet we’re more frustrated than ever. The reality is that expectations around speed and efficiency are outstripping even the most capable of humans.
Here are the three ways customer service goalposts are moving and how companies can tap technology to meet rising expectations:
1. No more wait times, but no more crappy bots, either
Instantaneity is now the expectation. For teens these days, it can be devastating socially if you get “left on read” for as little as 30 seconds. That means getting put on hold by customer service is obviously out. But so is waiting hours for an email response or being told to stand by while someone “escalates” your complaint to management.
What’s the way forward for businesses? AI agents obviously have the potential to delete hold times; they can answer your call (or email or DM) instantly. And they do away with the concept of “calling back” during business hours.
The challenge, of course, lies in raising the quality of the interaction. A speedy result is worthless if it isn’t helpful. Over the past decade, many customers have grown frustrated with basic customer support automation. That’s why it’s so important that legacy chatbots are now being replaced by full-fledged AI agents with some truly powerful capabilities.
Related: What You Must Know About the Next Generations of Consumers
2. Not just omnichannel, but multimodal, too
For Gen Z (and certainly Gen Alpha), talking with someone on the phone can be a deep suspicion. So much so that a quarter of those under 34 years old never answer phone calls at all. (We’ve come a long way from the nineties when hours-long phone calls dominated teenage life.)
Since a growing percentage of customers dislike phone calls, companies have to offer omnichannel options. That means email, text and social DMs should be viable pathways toward every solution – and not just a stopover en route to the business’s preferred channel.
However, to truly accommodate customers, we need to go beyond mere channel choice. Younger consumers expect to be able to hop between channels without dropping the conversational thread. Say I’m texting with an AI agent at a bike company and I upload a photo of my broken gear shift. Moving from there to an email that contains an insurance document should involve zero friction.
That’s extremely hard to do with traditional human agents. But increasingly, AI agents are capable of syncing all these inputs into a single conversation. Going forward, The gold standard will be this kind of multimodal omnichannel support, allowing for seamless interactions across platforms. And, in a world where customers have their pick from a global array of businesses, that level of efficiency becomes a powerful differentiator.
Related: Is the Future of Customer Service Omnichannel or Multichannel?
3. So long, FAQs; hello, actual resolutions
Back to my younger colleague and her vendetta against FAQs: the fundamental problem with routing people to a help page is that it puts the onus on customers to solve their own problems. But Gen Z doesn’t want a homework assignment; they want results.
Historically, that’s what’s been so gratifying about actually getting a human agent on the line. In the best-case scenario, they have the expertise and authority to walk you through that tricky installation, refund that damaged product or open that new checking account.
When it comes to chatbots and even their more sophisticated generative AI counterparts, too often, the best we can hope for is information — advice on how to fix a problem rather than a fixed problem. But Gen Z wants issues resolved in a single interaction.
This shift requires us to give AI agents more executive powers along with access to customer histories so they can personalize service. Going forward, AI agents should be able to act in the real world on your behalf, rather than simply point you toward the “next step.” A customer’s query or complaint should be instantly resolved without getting bogged down by layers of approval or human intervention.
A change for everyone
Importantly, these aren’t the fringe demands of a tiny cohort of consumers. Gen Z is already the largest generation in history, and its spending power is forecast to hit $12 trillion by the end of the decade. Ignoring their customer service preferences would be fatal.
Customer service teams have been saying it for years: “Your call is important to us…” Now, it’s time to prove it. And, of course, the reality is that we’re all clamoring for better customer service, regardless of demographic. In the end, pushing ourselves to accommodate Gen Z and Gen Alpha will make customer service more useful for all of us.
Because the next generation knows how good this tech can be. They know what a clunky chatbot sounds like; they know when a business is dropping the ball. Those higher standards should guide us as we build tomorrow’s services. Smart businesses are finding ways to meet young consumers where they are and level things up for everyone.
