Every time a new generation of people reach adulthood, things change. As young adults begin graduating from college and getting started in their careers, you have to start catering to them in the way you communicate and sell products. This change has been much more drastic as Millennials have started reaching careers and becoming your customers, and you may have even noticed a slight drop in sales in the last couple of years. Maybe, if you can master your Millennials customer service, you will be able to reach out to a new generation of buyers and start doing better than ever before.

What do they want?

According to Forbes, there have been many studies recently indicating that Millennials much prefer fast service that gets them out the door than a friendlier service where chatting might be involved. They are in a hurry to get back to their lives, whether that be to a Friday night party or a family waiting at home. They value their own time too much to want to spend more than they have to sitting at a restaurant or listening to you. On top of that, they usually know what they want before entering a store since they listen to the advice of friends and the internet over the advice of all salespeople. Though Forbes concludes that this kind of thinking is leading to the end of good customer service, I believe that it really is a new era of customer service, one that will cost you less money and still bring in a lot of customers. If things aren’t working the way you do them right now, you shouldn’t just give up and assume it is unnecessary. Millennial customer service will simply change the way you interact with customers, not completely destroy it.

What you can do

Here are a few things you can do to improve your customer service with Millennials:

1. Create efficiency: Millennials don’t care about your life or about friendly service, so make it as efficient as possible for them to get their stuff and check out without a lot of hassle. This means that you should train cashiers to be courteous and friendly (a hello and how are you doing is fine), but make sure they know that full conversations with customers should not be allowed, especially if it interferes with quick and convenient checkouts. Another way to do this would be to have credit card only lines or speedy checkouts for people with few items.

2. Contact is key: Though you may think that Millennials simply don’t want to be bothered by you, they are also not going to remember you if you can’t find a way to communicate with them. Most of them are avid texters and spend a lot of time on their phones. That is the perfect opportunity to communicate with them on a level they are used to. This means you should provide a texting platform where they can text you for quick, automated responses, and you can text them with information they are looking for. Never stop the contact; just find ways to contact them on their level of communication.

3. Learn to read your customers: Millennials aren’t all the same, and though there are general guidelines that can be followed for reaching out to them, you have to treat each one as an individual. Sure, a Millennial in your store would probably rather be left alone to do their shopping than be constantly bombarded with salespeople trying to help them out. However, you cannot assume all are the same and ignore the person standing there looking confused at the Vacuums. Make sure your customer service people are learning to watch people and read whether or not they need help finding something. That same Millennial who gets annoyed when you keep asking if they need help is also going to get annoyed and leave if there aren’t any customer service reps to help them when they need it.

Source: forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2014/09/08/era-eroding-customer-service/