According to one recent study, millennials made up approximately 22% of the population in the United States as of 2020. Another indicated that members of Generation Z made up 20.67% of the population.
Why is this important to know? Because it means that over 43% of consumers out there were born, at the oldest, in 1981. Gen Z was born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s. Their numbers are growing all the time, as is the amount of disposable income they have to shop with. So if it feels like your average audience member is getting younger all the time, you’re not imagining things – you’re absolutely right.
But it’s equally important to understand that you can’t just be focused on how much money these groups are spending – how they’re spending it is just as fascinating. Gen Z alone has an estimated $360 billion in disposable income, and they’re using it in different ways when compared to their boomer predecessors, in particular.
They plan to spend less during the holiday seasons. More than half of them prefer to find out about new businesses via social media than regular online searches. Fully 64% of them would rather handle customer service needs on a site like Twitter than by picking up the phone.
Statistics like these underline the importance of offering a true omnichannel experience to meet this younger generation of consumers head-on. It can help you optimize your customer service efforts from the ground up with them in mind. Doing so will require the right technology, and platforms like Mitto are a big part of it.
The Future of Customer Service Begins Now
Originally founded in 2013, Mitto AG aims to deliver reliable, high-quality communications between businesses and the consumers they’ve dedicated themselves to serving, no matter what. More than anything, Mitto wants to make sure organizations of all types have access to the technology, the tools, and the support necessary to establish long-term relationships with as many people as possible.
People like Mitto Chief Operating Officer Ilja Gorelik have worked tirelessly to help make that happen over the years. In his mind, while the technology may be inherently complicated, the approach is anything but. Global businesses obviously have global customers, especially on a generational level, that all choose to interact with the brands they love in slightly different ways. Mitto puts the tools in people’s hands to have that interaction on their own terms, each and every time.
One of the major reasons why this type of technology is so important has to do with the need that Gen Z members have for authentic, hyper-personalized communication. Consider the fact that not only do over half of them use a smartphone, but they also tend to spend at least five hours or more on it per day.
The smartphone is a powerful device, but it is also nothing if not intimate. Most people check it for the first time every day while they’re still in bed in the morning. It’s your gateway to reaching someone virtually anywhere, but you cannot abuse that privilege. To communicate effectively, you need to show that you understand them and that you hold the same values that they do.
You also need to do this on a mass scale, which is why platforms like Mitto are so essential. They allow you to embrace meaningful automation to your advantage, sending out the personalized communications across multiple channels that millennials and Gen Z members want in a way that saves precious time and effort on your end, too.
One of the major themes pertaining to communicating with younger consumers in particular has to do with evolution. Today, people prefer X, Y, and Z channels. That could change six months from today, a week from now, or even tomorrow. Soon, people might prefer some new digital channel that literally doesn’t exist right now that seemingly comes out of nowhere. We all remember how barely anyone knew about Zoom in 2019, and then, the moment the pandemic hit, it was suddenly everywhere.
Case in point: Email used to be one of the best ways to communicate with younger people, but no more. Now, two-thirds of Gen Z members prefer SMS text messaging over email during all e-commerce interactions.
You need a platform capable of allowing you to embrace the best digital channels of today and quickly pivot to the ones of tomorrow should the need arise, too. Your technology needs to support and empower your employees to communicate as you (and the market around you) continue to grow and evolve. That’s one of the major reasons why having a platform like Mitto at the heart of your omnichannel strategies can be a huge boost to your efforts with younger people in particular.
Using Technology to Solve Customer Service Problems
From the perspective of COO Ilja Gorelik, one of the most exciting advancements in Mitto’s quest to better serve both brands and consumers by way of omnichannel strategies came by way of an increased emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI).
One of the bigger hurdles that a lot of brands often have to clear comes by way of delivery rates. Try as hard as you’d like, it’s far too easy to end up in someone’s SPAM folder rather than their email inbox. Because of that, a lot of businesses were paying for messages that never ended up getting delivered to customers – especially millennials and those who make up Gen Z.
With Mitto, however, customer traffic is always run through an innovative routing platform that constantly checks the possible routes that a message might take to get from a business to its audience. Artificial intelligence considers the type of message, the priority of the message and more, all to instantly select the best possible delivery path.
All of this happens automatically in a way that adjusts techniques for the best possible ratio between quality and cost. Essentially, it’s a way to leverage artificial intelligence to make sure that the right message always makes it to the right person by way of the right channel, absolutely every time. This is just one example of the many ways that Mitto helps businesses evolve alongside the preferences of their consumers.
Indeed, that may very well be the biggest benefit that Mitto brings to the omnichannel strategies of businesses within the context of reaching Gen Z: the ability to prepare for whatever tomorrow might hold.
Case in point: everything going on in the world over the last few years. While younger consumers, who grew up with smartphones and tablets, were increasingly moving toward a “digital first” commerce experience, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic virtually eliminated all in-person communications overnight. That acted as the accelerant that transformed a “digital-first” preference” into a “digital-only” requirement far faster than anyone thought would happen.
Right now, there is an entire generation of consumers growing up who won’t even think about coming into a physical store or even picking up the phone to meet their customer service needs. They’ll choose one of a myriad of different channels, with new options being made available all the time. In this fast-paced digital world, the pressure falls firmly on businesses to communicate with their customers through the channels they desire. They have to meet the customers where they are, not where they wish the customers would be.
That, in essence, is what Mitto AG is all about. It’s a communications tool that is versatile enough to evolve alongside younger generations of consumers and powerful enough to make sure that a business’s critical messaging is always received in the best way at precisely the appropriate time.
Propelling Your Customer Service Efforts Forward
In the end, it’s clear that generational consumer preferences are changing – and the requirements that a business must meet to effectively serve a younger market are changing right along with them.
Gone are the days when someone was willing to simply pick up the phone and call a customer service representative for help. If those who make up Generation Z and the millennials have a question, they want an immediate answer. If they have a concern, they aren’t willing to wait for it to be addressed. Whether they choose to make contact via email, a social media network like Facebook or Twitter, a chatbot on your website or something else entirely doesn’t matter – you have to rise up to meet them where they are, when they are, no matter what.
Yes, this is a significant adjustment from the way things are “traditionally” done, especially for older brands. But those organizations that are able to evolve alongside the expectations of Gen Z and millennials will carve out a significant competitive advantage for themselves in their industries. Those who don’t will soon find themselves left behind by savvier organizations with an eye toward the future. With resources like Mitto omnichannel strategies at your side, you can help make sure you wind up in the former category instead of the latter in the most efficient way possible.
