Millennials - how is your call centre adapting to this generation?

Having grown up in a time of rapid change, millennials have a different set of priorities and expectations, and it is for this reason they are revolutionising business as we know it. Advancement in technology means future workforces will continue to evolve internally and externally.

Global leader in customer engagement solutions, Aspect Software, encourages organisations to explore different ways of adapting protocols and implementing new communication systems in order to cater to the tech-savvy demands of the millennial generation.

"Millennials have become reliant on mobile devices and have become accustomed to accessing information immediately through a number of contact channels. In order for companies to ensure they are adapting to the customer engagement strategies, they need to ensure that their contact centres are advanced enough to effectively provide for this generation," explains Regional Sales Director for Aspect Software South Africa, Henry McCracken.

Consistent messaging is key in pleasing millennial customers, and this should be done through mobile Web, live chat, social media or text. "Over the phone service needs to be imitated on social media platforms and should provide a unified transition between channels. This requires an omni-channel service to enable customer care, which means providing real value. In addition, organisations need to take advantage of the power of social media by creating two-way conversations with their millennial customers," McCracken adds.

Millennials have become habituated with convenience, and businesses need to be developing with the millennials digitally-driven lifestyle. Providing self-service features and more channel choices will not only benefit customers by delivering tangible benefits such as convenience, flexibility and autonomy, but it will empower agents with relevant, useful and influential information.

Aspect Software understands the significance of accommodating this generation and has designed innovative call centre software that brings all contact options together in one place on one unified platform. "With this software, agents are able to constantly talk, type and converse with millennial customers through the various channels that are most accessible and convenient for them. In turn, this will ensure that millennials will feel attended to and will lead to a higher bottom line revenue for companies," concludes McCracken.