It goes without saying that when you have a good experience with a brand, be it in a store, online or via a call centre, that you have a positive feeling towards the brand or company as a whole.

This is even truer of millennials, for whom brand perception is crucial. In fact, in a recent survey undertaken by Citrus Group, the leaders in contact centre recruitment, 57% of millennials said that they would reconsider using a brand in the future if they had a bad experience when talking to staff in a contact centre.

Ensuring your call centre staff aren’t alienating millennials therefore is key to any brand's long-term success.

My tips for companies wanting to ensure young people have a good experience when calling contact centres, in turn creating customers for life:

Omni channels: Millennials are far happier connecting with brands through SMS, emails or messenger rather than on the phone. As such, it’s important that your brand has multichannel customer experiences, allowing customers to interact with you in any way they choose. This will ensure that this customer base is happy when dealing with your brands customer service, in turn ensuring the younger demographic become repeat customers to your brand.

Be ‘always on’: There’s nothing more annoying than trying to get onto a contact centre to resolve an issue, only to find that their opening hours are the same as your working hours and that there’s no email address in sight. For brands to really get ahead with millennials, they must ensure that they are always on, meaning that they must be contactable at all times. This doesn’t have to be via phone, but can be via email, chat bot or messenger.
Ensure staff have both authenticity and empathy: When asked why they had had a negative experience with contact centres, millennial stated that staff were rude, which goes without saying is damaging to your brand. Staff must be highly trained to be both authentic when dealing with issues, as well as empathetic to the individuals situation. Both of these personal skills are of high importance to millennials and will go a long way to ensuring customer satisfaction amongst them.

Speed: Young people want their issues solved instantaneously. This can be hard for brands, but ensuring staff are efficient is key. It’s also important to note that millennials don’t want to spend big chunks of time waiting (who does?) to get through to a contact centre, or when they do get through, on the phone to staff. Ensure your contact centres are fully staffed to take calls and cut waiting time, as well as your staff are highly trained and efficient in dealing with issues.

Proactiveness: Whilst staff may not always be able to solve customer issues straight away, it’s imperative that they proactively aim to do so. By offering clear FAQs on your website, outbound calls and email reminders, you’ll ensure you are always providing a proactive customer service experience.

Related reading:

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Australian millennials losing confidence in business

Millennial workers are reshaping workplaces for greater flexibility