Generation Y snubs the traditional phone

‘Voice only’ contact centres are now down to 53.8% compared with 69.4% 12 months ago.

Dimension Data’s 2013/14 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report has revealed that for Generation Y the phone is now the joint third choice of engagement with social media, after electronic messaging applications.

In addition, the preference gaps for Generation X between phone, messaging, and social media is also narrowing.

“While the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers prefer the phone as their most popular channel of engagement with a contact centre (44.7% and 49.4% respectively), the pace of decline in ‘voice only’ contact centres – now down to 53.8% overall compared with 69.4% 12 months ago – demonstrates the continuing trend to multiskill telephone agents across emerging ‘non-voice’ contact channels,” said Andrew McNair, Dimension Data’s Head of Global Benchmarking.

“Generation Y is the biggest demographic group since the Baby Boomers. Its members are highly demanding, vigorously social, constantly connected, and blithely channel-agnostic, so for them, any conversation about channels is meaningless. Generation Y simply want to get things done, and will use a variety of electronic devices they have at their disposal to fulfil that need.”

Further highlights of the benchmarking report include:

• The contact centre of the future needs a new calibre of resource.  Meanwhile, front-line contact centre staff are jumping ship because they can’t keep pace with the complexity of transactions, and they aren’t being equipped with the new skills needed to keep up with customer expectations.
• Web chat is the top expectation of global contact centre managers and consumers in 2014.  What’s more, organisations believe web chat could be the hybrid solution that bridges and gap between the phone and email in contact centres.
• Organisations have never before had so many technology challenges thrown at them – and the contact centre landscape is changing fast. Cloud-based solutions could be the game changer and offer alternative purchasing options to IT solution design.