3 Must-Knows of Customer Service and Gen X

The most important thing to know for successful Marketing & Customer Service is [Your Customer] and if Generation X is your target market then you to be ready to stray from conventional methods for an unconventional clientele.

A little history…

On May 8th 1945 the Allied forces accepted the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers (bear with me I promise this is relevant) with approximately 14.5 U.S. troops. With nothing better to do they ran full speed home to the loving arms of their significant others, or pretty much anyone available. As a result there were more babies born in 1946 than ever before, giving rise to the Baby Boomer generation. A generation that watched the first TV programming, participated in social revolution, saw a man walk on the moon and then gave birth to….

GENERATION – X [Mid 60’s – Mid 80’s]

Who are they?

Geeks –Gamers – Independent Thinkers- Divorce – Artists – Global Citizens

What do they like?

Shopping Malls – The Internet – TV – Rapid Cultural Evolution – Social Media

• Technology is our friend: Since the advent of Atari, the Internet and Floppy disks – Gen X has never been outside arms reach from technological tools, which has quickly changed the way we work, live, love, spend and learn.

Often we confuse “amazing customer service” with a live representative but this isn’t always the reality. Servicing a customer is about 2 things:

1) Accomplishing a goal ie. I need to return an item and

2) The customer needs to leave the interaction feeling emotionally elevated

Individual > customer #: Pondering one’s role in an infinite universe and over-analyzing how many ‘likes’ our most recent status update received, demonstrates our need for diversity, individuality and self-worth.

Businesses often search for custom-solutions to fit consumer’s exact needs but generally come up short in their efforts.

• The NEED for SPEED: With a rapidly changing market it is easy to fall behind, so time and efficiency is king. The average Gen X-er has 26 different accounts, 5.54 social media accounts and 73.3% are online consumers. These combined factors produce an infinite number of potential customer service and technical support interactions and nobody has time for hour-long waits and poorly trained representatives who fumble through in-house knowledge based software.