If you plan on having a successful business, organization or ministry that somehow caters to or reaches those born 1980 til now, you will have to change your approach. Inconvenient? Yes. Uncomfortable because it is different to everything you have been taught as a Baby Boomer, Generation Y or Greatest Generation member? Yes. But are these approaches vital for you to consider and adapt?
Forbes.com has a guest author that penned "7 Ways to Serve & Keep Millennial Customers." It is definitely worth your read. He says:
"This new generation thinks differently about customer service, about how they want to be treated in business interactions. It is a generation of consumers defined by the digital world that they’ve known since infancy...[They] have little understanding of the more earthbound systems and expectations that dominated the consumer landscape only a few years ago.
"...But the particulars of how customer service has been delivered for the last several decades are extremely baby boom specific. it’s time for businesses to change, and change fast."
The author highlights these 7 things to focus on:
1. Offload the transactional
2. Focus on the experiential.
3. Understand customer self-determination.
4. Become a speed-freak
5. Leave your customers time and space to breathe.
6. Consider values.
7. Speak their language.
If you want them to be in your customer population and you want your entity to succeed, you better take note. And make changes - fast. Millennials aren't going anywhere. And their children's generation will differ even more.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2013/07/25/7-ways-to-serve-and-keep-millennial-customers/