Millennials: Making Them Wait Could Cost you Brand Loyalty

With today’s ever competing, transparent marketplace, it’s easier than ever for consumers to shop around with the touch of a button to find not only the best deal, but also the best company to do business with. Reviews, both good and bad, are readily available from a mass of one click links. So how do you set yourself apart from the competition in today’s era of millennials and ensure you’re retaining these youthful customers whose buying power will soon exceed that of the Boomers? Perfect the art of providing Millennials great customer service.

Customer service is essential to the overall customer experience that millennials have come to not only expect, but demand, from any company they do business with. This experience is tested when they need to ask for help or assistance - or simply have a question to be answered. In past times calling customer service often meant providing the same information multiple times, listening to the same music on hold, and spending more time than anticipated to resolve an issue. Waiting for an available agent after steering through a set of menus means you’re waiting on hold no matter how simple or complex your issue is. On top of that, even after you’re connected, your information most times doesn’t follow your call which means you’re wasting time yet again giving agent after agent the run down. It’s easy to see why many customers end up frustrated by the experience even if their issue is successfully resolved.

So how do you keep these shade-grown-shitake-mushroom eating millennials happy? By linking Amazon Connect with Amazon Lex chatbots, a machine alternative that fulfills customer requests with natural language. Amazon Lex uses the same conversational technology as Amazon Alexa and is Amazon Web Services’ chatbot platform. By combining both Amazon Lex chatbots into the Amazon Connect contact flow, customers can now get immediate help without depending on menus or specific voice commands. For example, an Amazon Lex conversation with your doctor’s office might sound like this…

Connect: "Hello, thank you for calling. Is this Steve?"

Steve: "Yes"

Connect: "I see you have an appointment this Thursday. Are you calling to confirm?"

Steve: "No I’m not"

Connect: "Ok, what are you calling about?"

Steve: "I'd like to change my appointment to be next Tuesday."

Connect: "No problem, I have availability on Tuesday August 22nd at 1:00 PM. Does that work?

Steve: "That's fine."

Connect: "Great. I have booked an appointment for you on Tuesday August 22nd at 1:00 PM. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Steve: "Can you send me a text confirmation?"

Connect: "Sure. I have sent a text message confirmation of your appointment to your cell. Can I do anything more for you?"

Steve: "No, that's great. Bye."

The chatbot is both fast and natural in its ability to handle the customer’s request without needing to wait for an agent. There are no menus or customer information needed as the office already has that. With the integration of AWS Lambda making corresponding calls to the database and scheduling software, this interaction not only happens fast, but at extremely low cost as well.

Let’s say Steve wants to speak to somebody directly as his issue could not be resolved via chatbot. Amazon Lex is able to pass on the entire conversation to a human agent thereby saving both the customer and the agent valuable time by not having to repeat answers to questions. The entire experience increases the odds that the customer will hang up feeling positive about the interaction and not only remain a customer, but spread their brand loyalty as well, which, as many already know, is an identifying trait of millennials.

Millennials are the largest generation in U.S. and world history and they’re demanding a unique customer experience. Whether your are part of this ramen-eating group or trying to market to them, Voice Foundry can help navigate customer demands that will only continue to grow. We can help you create a vision and plan to stay ahead of the curve and make the move to the newly launched Amazon Connect.