If you are interested in having Millennials and Gen Z’s (consumers under 30) as your customers you will need to meet their expectations and understand how best to serve them.

As my mentor Allen Pathmarajah  says “give people what they want A and you will get what you want .

1. Millennials and Gen Zs don’t suffer fools and clunky technology

These humans have been using smartphones and tablets that bundle communication, entertainment, shopping, mapping and education all in one – since they were in nappies !

They have always Internet and google at home and in school and knowledge, music and areas of interest have been at their fingertips ! 

They are digital natives and your UX just needs to work and work easily and fast – from the log-in process onward. Your App and technology must not be clunky – this demographic does not have the patience to struggle to find a workaround – they don’t have to ! 

2. The customer experience is now a social experience.

This demographic do not experience in silence !!! They eat and do – noisily !!

Online and offline social activities and circles of friends overlap and they tend to travel in packs or “groups”

They share experiences on Facebook, Snapchat, Foursquare, Tik Tok and other social sites, and they are eager to connect collaborate and contribute. 

As a supplier – you need to be where your customers are! 

A Boston Consulting Group reports that “the vast majority [of Millennials]…report taking action on behalf of brands and sharing brand preferences in their social groups.”

3. Your brand needs to be open to customer collaboration and co-creation.

Younger consumers enjoy the possibility of collaborating with businesses and brands, as long as they believe that their say matters to the company in question. 

They don’t necessarily see a clear boundary between the customer and the brand, the customer and marketer, and the customer and service provider. 

Alex Castellarnau at Dropbox, the popular file transfer service, puts it this way: with Millennials, “a new brand, service or product is only started by the company; it’s finished by the customers. 

Millennials are a generation that wants to co-create the product, the brand, with you. 

Companies that understand this and figure out ways to engage in this co-creation relationship with Millennials will have an edge.”

4. You need to offer self-service and crowdsourced customer service options.

Building the right customer experience for this new generation of customers requires you to think hard about an uncomfortable subject: where human employees are helpful to customers, and where they just get in the way. 

Today’s customers often do want you out of the way. Younger customers hold different ideas about where human-powered service fits into the customer experience. 

These customers, through years of experience with online and self-service solutions, have grown used to the way technology can reduce the need for human gatekeepers to ensure accuracy and manage data. 

The last thing they want is for your employees to gum up the works without adding value.

5. Millennial and Gen Z customers want a true, authentic and personalized experience.

Younger consumers crave the joys of adventure and discovery, whether epic or everyday. They often view commerce and even obligatory business travel as opportunities rather than burdens, due to the adventures that can be had along the way. 

• they prefer an “experiential” retail environment, where shopping is more than a transaction and the pleasure of being in the store isn’t limited to the goods they can take home.

• When they dine out, they’re often in search of something exotic, adventuresome, memorable or new to explore during their dining experience. 

This has helped transform cuisine searches (“tastespotting”) into an adventure—and food truck-following (a concept sure to evoke fears of stomachache in some of their elders) into its own culture.

6. They care about your values as a company.

They integrate their beliefs and causes into their choice of companies to support, their purchases and their day-to-day interactions. 

More than 50% of Millennials make an effort to buy products from companies that support the causes they care about, according to research from Barkley, an independent advertising agency. 

They are  twice as likely to care about whether or not their food is organic – Even if they are money-strapped they will buy what they believe in .

Their interests dictate the tribes they identify themselves with, what’s important to them first and foremost, and how their buying decisions are impacted. 

Adapted from article  in CEO Jan 10 2020, by Micah Solomon – shared by https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevefriedewald