Several years ago, the outlook was a little hazy as to if the public sector would move to the cloud, but with the Office of Management and Budget’s Cloud First initiative, it’s now just a question of who, what and when most agencies will do so, if they haven’t already.

Just as it’s lowered entry barriers for businesses in the private sector, cloud computing is making sophisticated customer engagement technologies available to cost-conscious government entities who have long been barraged by constituent complaints and angry reviews about service quality and speed, but have had no easy or affordable way to improve upon the siloed solutions that had been in place for years.

“The cloud has always been an attractive IT solution for the government because it’s so difficult to get capital expenditures budgeted,” says Ken Landoline, principal analyst at Current Analysis. “If an agency had to deploy an ACD (automatic call distributor) for a call center, it meant spending $2 to $3 million on hardware, software and start-up costs. Now, they can have customer service software up and running in a couple of days in the cloud, with a monthly expense to manage as opposed to a capital investment.”

Such benefits have been driving the U.S. government’s Cloud First strategy, which requires agencies to evaluate secure cloud computing options before making new IT investments. This same strategy identified $20 billion in potential savings from cloud computing, representing about a quarter of federal IT spending.

The private sector was first to successfully test cloud solutions for customization, scale and effectiveness. In a recent Sailpoint survey of more than 400 private sector IT and business leaders, respondents reported that one-third of their mission-critical applications are now in the cloud, a number they expect to grow to half by 2015.

As for the public section, the IDC predicts that federal government cloud services adoption will increase by 50% in 2013 over 2012, comprising more than 7% of government IT spending. Drilling down 25% of IT leaders responding to InformationWeek’s 2013 Federal Government Cloud Computing Survey said they’ve already taking advantage of SaaS solutions, while 56% cited SaaS as their next cloud initiative, even though security does remain a chief concern.

A recent MeriTalk report on migrating mission-critical applications to the cloud reveals that the government could save approximately $16.6 billion annually if all agencies move just three mission-critical applications to the cloud. Of those that have already moved at least one, 91 percent have reported success.

Cloud adoption by the government isn’t just a US phenomenon. The UK and Australia are among many others working to support cloud computing adoption. The public sector’s collective priority is right on track, in line with Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for Smart Government, which includes cloud computing at number 9:

1. Mobile Devices
2. Contextual and Social User Experience
3. Next-Gen Analytics
4. Internet of Things
5. Citizen-Managed Data
6. Business Process Management
7. Big Data Information Management
8. Enterprise App Stores
9. Cloud Computing
10. Cross-Domain Interoperability

The move to the cloud is just a part of a bigger forecast that includes navigating a perfect storm of individually disruptive yet converging technologies known as the nexus of forces which includes mobile, social, cloud and big data.

New Parature Whitepaper Details Additional Government Customer Service Best Practices

For more government customer service best practices and advice from leading analysts, download Parature’s latest whitepaper, Multi-Channel Service: Elect to Serve Your Constituents, covering key topics in government customer service and constituent engagement including:

• Providing ‘no wrong door’ access
• Moving to the cloud
• Capturing voice of the customer feedback
• Using service to drive revenues and compete with the private sector
• Leveraging cloud technology simplicity to attract, retain and maximize IT talent.

Click here to download.

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• 4 Best Practices for Better Government Customer Service Delivery

• Nexus of Forces Shifts Government IT Spending: Mobile Tops Priorities

Consumers are becoming increasingly more comfortable with providing personal information for an improved customer experience, and in fact, most desire that personal touch. In the Cisco Customer Experience Report which surveyed more than 1,500 consumers across 10 countries:

• 49% said they would allow retailers to collect personal shopping data in exchange for a more personalized customer service experience.
• 54% are comfortable with retailers storing their purchase history in exchange for increased personalized value.
• 65% said they are comfortable receiving mobile retail advice based on their current location as detected through their mobile device.

But, in providing more detailed personal information, there comes with it an increasing level of implied trust between the customer and the brand that the information will remain “just between friends.” In the same Cisco Customer Experience Report, 69% of U.S. customers said they would be willing to give their bank more personal information if it meant they could receive more personalized services – but 57% said they don’t want their bank to share any of the personal information they provide with any other organization, even if it would improve service for others.

Beyond who can view and use customer information, the second line drawn is a little less defined, but no less important. Consumers desire a customized experience, but not to the point of being creepy. There is such a thing as too much information, and brands and organizations must be cautiously selective on creating a Goldilocks level of personalization that keeps customers happy and comfortable.

Here are three initial ways to successfully begin personalizing the customer experience without getting too personal:

1. Call the Customer by Name: Using a person’s name is one of the biggest little things a brand can do to improve the customer experience. While incorporating a customer’s name into the customer experience may seem simple, there is an art to its use that includes correct usage, correct spelling, pronunciation, not using it too much and never asking the customer to repeat it. What’s in a name? Much more than you think when it comes to personalizing the customer experience.

2. Deliver Custom Content: If you know what your customers are searching for, give it to them; don’t make them hunt. As Gartner analyst Johan Jacobs told me at a recent Gartner Customer 360 Summit, you can have the best content in the world, but if your customers can’t find it, it doesn’t matter. Whether its product or service related content based on past or recent purchases, or customer service content based on frequently asked questions or search analytics, personalized content is proven to improve the customer experience. According to a recent Customer Content Council study:

• 90% of consumers find custom content useful.
• 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.
• and 61% of people feel better about a company that delivers custom content and are more likely to buy from that company. Content is king, especially when its customized.

3. Ask the Right Questions: Increase the completion rate of customer surveys, as well as customer satisfaction, by personalizing feedback requests not just with the customers’ name, but by tailoring the questions to match the individual customer. Consumers rapidly lose motivation for completing surveys with numerous questions, when only some or a few of the questions matter to them. Personalizing feedback requests not only shows the customer that you care about what matters to them, but following up and letting the customer know how your brand or organization took action, matters even more.

While your organization may now have access to an incredible amount of customer data and even more ideas for its use, the best success stories come from those brands who use the information wisely, showing restraint and respect for their customers’ information by improving the customer experience through personalization, without ever making an experience far too personal.  Introduce personalization through customer data in small meaningful ways, building upon your customers’ trust, comfort levels and expectations over time.

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• Customer Service is No Longer a Script; It’s a Conversation

Chat allows today’s hyper-connected customers to stay online, avoid hold times, multitask while they’re seeking customer service, and use the brief messaging bursts of language they’ve become accustomed to on their smartphones and social media, all keys to saving time, which is a huge consideration for today’s consumer.

Forrester data shows that 71% of US online adult consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service, and a 2013 LivePerson Connecting with Customers report which surveyed 5,700 global consumers corroborates this.

The data shows that online consumer expectations are rapidly increasing. Eight-three percent (83%) of the more than 5,000 consumers said they consistently need some type of support during their online journey, and the expectations for speed of service should prove intimidating for most brands:

• 71% expect assistance within five minutes.
• If they don’t receive it, 48% will abandon the site (this percentage jumps to 58% for consumers in the UK).

Consumers also ranked the top three elements of a great online experience:

1. Getting my issue resolved quickly (82%)
2. Getting my issue resolved in a single interaction (56%)
3. Dealing with a friendly customer service representative (45%)

This is why chat makes so much sense as a complementary service channel. Not only is service fast and immediately accessible, but it’s personalized, too. In a new Forrester report, Market Overview: Chat Solutions for Customer Service, Forrester analysts Kate Leggett and Art Schoeller offer some key reasons to view chat as a competitive customer service differentiator, including:

• Chat usage rates have risen in the past three years from 30% to 43%.
• All demographics are comfortable with the channel; even one-third of Older Boomers and the Golden Generation use chat for customer service.
• Satisfaction rates for chat are only superseded by those for voice (63% rating for chat, 69% for voice).

As an example of chat’s ability to increase satisfaction, the Forrester report notes that Virgin Atlantic Airways’ use of the channel has helped raise the brand’s CSAT scores to over 80%.

Here are five additional reasons why a growing number of brands are deciding it’s finally time to chat with customers:

1. Cost Efficiency: Live chat is a cost-conscious choice for those organizations that want to provide more personalized service. Customers can get one-on-one assistance from a live customer service representative at their convenience, while companies save because behind the scenes, agents can handle multiple chats simultaneously. Chat is also known to increase first contact resolution rates.
2. Functionality: Companies can utilize live chat in a game, on a form, in an application, as part of their knowledgebase or with an online shopping cart. It can even be deployed on a brand’s Facebook page. Many organizations also monitor their web analytics, deploying chat on the pages of their websites with the highest exit rates.
3. Increased Sales: Chat is known to improve web conversion rates, as it keeps consumers from abandoning online shopping carts and order forms. It is also considered a key upselling and cross-selling tool. Agents can view a customer’s purchase and service history and suggest related products and services, or upgrades.
4. Dual Use: Organizations can use chat solely as a reactive channel, leaving it entirely up to the customers to click on the button for live chat assistance, or brands can use it as a proactive channel, inviting and engaging users to chat based on custom criteria such as if the customer has visited the site often in the past few days, is taking a long time on the checkout page or form, etc.
5. Popularity: Forrester data shows that Generations Z and X have higher satisfaction chatting with a live agent rather than speaking on the telephone with a live agent, as talking by typing is the preferred method of communication for the greater part of the younger audience.

Chat as a primary customer service channel has come of age. Watch for it to have an increasingly prominent role as a preferred method as consumers become increasingly connected and turn to chat so multitask and save time.

Click here to access the new Forrester report Market Overview: Chat Solutions for Customer Service to learn more about chat as a customer service channel and review 20 of the top live chat vendors for customer service, including Parature.

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• Parature Live Chat

For government customer service perception to noticeably improve, agencies at all levels require a citizen engagement strategy that’s of the people, by the people, for the people, and able to serve them anytime, anywhere, on any device. Thanks to a pioneering effort and investment in CRM technology by customer-centric brands in the private sector, the groundwork has already been laid and tested for this “no wrong door” approach, which not only improves customer satisfaction by giving the public a choice in how they initiate and receive service, but opens up channels that are far less costly than traditional ones such as phone or email.

Self-Service Channels Prove Effective in Many Ways

Self-service knowledgebases and video, as examples, reduce costs by enabling constituents to address and answer common issues and questions themselves. Today, nearly 70% of people seeking information or support try self-service options first through a provider’s knowledgebase or through a general web search, according to market research firm ServiceVRG. If the individual needs additional help, he or she can then seamlessly escalate to assisted service such as live chat or help desk ticketing, which through cloud-based CRM technologies, is all managed and reported on in one place.

“If every phone call costs an agency $25, call deflection achieved through a good self-service knowledgebase represents a huge savings,” says Ken Landoline, principal analyst, Current Analysis, “and if users who escalate issues are routed to the right person in the right department the first time, that’s a significant savings too.”

“The federal government has obviously lagged behind on customer service, but that’s changing,” says Landoline. E-government initiatives have, in fact, already contributed to an uptick in the public perception.  When asked whether they were satisfied with the service provided by agencies in 2012, 71% of citizens said they were, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Yet this number contrasts sharply with satisfaction with the federal government overall, at 43%.

While there’s still a way to go, more channels and the “no-wrong door approach” has service satisfaction levels headed in the right direction. E-government communication channels continue to earn higher satisfaction scores than more traditional modes of communication, according to the ACSI. The index shows that citizens who interact with government using websites (67) or email (66) are more satisfied than those who interact with agencies via phone (65) or printed materials received via mail (62).

The Social Aspect of Government Customer Service

Not to be ignored is the use of the social media as a new channel for government customer service and engagement. Popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming a destination for service requests and community-sourced support. Fifty-one percent (51%) of respondents in a 2013 Accenture survey said they’d be willing to use social media to contact government agencies to request service and resolve issues. To successfully meet this initiative, agencies should consider integrating social channels with contact management databases and other service channels, providing seamless escalation and resolution rules, no matter how the public reaches out for help or information, whether that’s social, mobile or social via mobile.

One agency already using social media to transform service delivery is the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS). Active duty military, veterans, dependents and civilian personnel around the globe can now access self-service resources and information on benefits, payments and other transactions through DFAS’s Facebook page. While the organization still offers multiple contact options such as email and phone, its social media initiative has significantly reduced reliance on more high-touch channels such as phone and email, proving the “no wrong door” approach to be the continued right approach for better service, support and communication with the public and equally important audiences served by government agencies.

New Parature Whitepaper Details Additional Government Customer Service Best Practices

For more best practices and advice from leading analysts, download Parature’s latest whitepaper, Multi-Channel Service: Elect to Serve Your Constituents, covering key topics in government customer service and constituent engagement including:

• Providing ‘no wrong door’ access
• Moving to the cloud
• Capturing voice of the customer feedback
• Using service to drive revenues and compete with the private sector
• Leveraging cloud technology simplicity to attract, retain and maximize IT talent.

Click here to download.

Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson serves travelers abroad a Virgin America flight New York to San Francisco in a handout photo from Virgin America.

Dos Equis may lay claim to The Most Interesting Man in the World, but it’s another brand that boasts the world’s most interesting and famous customer service representative: Virgin Group Founder, Richard Branson.

While the billionaire son of a barrister and flight attendant could easily take a break from the business spotlight, he chooses to continually shine it toward what he believes is a key differentiator for all brands including his own, and that’s customer service. In Forbes, Entrepreneur magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and on his own blog and Twitter (when Richard Branson tweets, it’s him, not an assistant or a PR firm), Branson consistently credits customer service as a key to his companies’ and other companies’ success. And if Sir Richard Branson is willing to dress up as a female flight attendant and serve drinks in front of the cameras (even if it was the result a bet), you better believe he is willing to do whatever it takes to promote his brand’s service.

Here are five key words of advice for any customer-focused organization from The World’s Most Famous Customer Service Representative:

1. On setting realistic customer expectations from Entrepreneur magazine: “The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.

“If you are seizing on a new business opportunity, deliberately move your customers’ expectations up a few notches and consistently over-deliver on your promises — you will leave your competitors struggling to catch up.”

2. On hiring the right people and empowering them to do the right thing from Entrepreneur magazine : “Doing things better doesn’t have to cost more — all it takes is a little creativity and attention to hiring, training and management.

“To achieve consistently terrific customer service, you must hire wonderful people who believe in your company’s goals, habitually do better than the norm and who will love their jobs; make sure that their ideas and opinions are heard and respected; then give them the freedom to help and solve problems for your customers. Rather than providing rules or scripts, you should ask them to treat the customer as they themselves would like to be treated — which is surely the highest standard.”

3. On responsiveness to customers from Live Mint and The Wall Street Journal:  “A successful business must never lose its focus on its customers and its standards. Managers and executives need to be constantly on their guard and respond quickly to problems. Thanks to the Internet, the fallout from a badly handled complaint in London can reach the other side of the globe within seconds. When an issue turns up, a company’s response can have a big impact on its reputation and its long-term success.”

4. On making a good first, and even better second, impression from the American Express Open Forum: “In business, creating a favorable impression at the first point of customer contact is an absolute imperative. Though everyone knows this, many companies still only manage to do a mediocre job at best.

“But what isn’t widely understood is… the customer’s second impression of the brand can be even more important than his first. The second interaction a customer has with your business usually involves something that has gone wrong — they’re having trouble using the product or service. Handled correctly, this is a situation in which a company can create a very positive impression. Sadly, it’s where things often go terribly wrong.”

5. On customer service as a business differentiator from Forbes:  “Look, I think that when we started Virgin Atlantic 30 years ago, we had one 747 competing with the airlines that had an average of 300 planes each. Every single one of those have gone bankrupt because they didn’t have customer service. They had might, but they didn’t have customer service, so customer service is everything in the end.”

Deloitte’s 2013 Global Contact Center Survey Report shows that contact centers continue to grow, with 77% of those polled saying they expect to maintain their size or expand within the next two years, with growth driven in large part by the need to improve service. For the report, Deloitte surveyed 560 contact centers across four continents and seven industries including the public sector, software tech, media, telecom, healthcare and financial services.

While smaller brands and organizations are typically agile and better able to adapt to changing customer expectations and emerging customer service channels, large contact centers tend to be challenged with making the best out of the technology they have, siloed customer data and set-in-stone policies and procedures. This makes noticeably improving customer service and the customer experience at scale to compete with digital disruptors and an always-online global marketplace a monumental task.

Let’s Take it from the Top

If you did have to move a mountain, it would be easiest to start from the top, and as a positive, the majority of contact centers polled by Deloitte have a solid footing in knowing where they want and need to go: 82% view the customer experience as a competitive differentiator, and view accuracy and quality of information provided (82%), as well as ease of interaction (73%), as the most important attributes of a quality customer experience.  Only 6% of those polled believe speed of interaction to be the most important attribute in customer experience quality, showing that contact centers are ready to set aside frustrating scripts, auto-responses and CSRs bound by strict time limits to achieve increased first contact resolution and a more authentic customer experience – two items that are harder to measure, yet incredibly important to customer satisfaction.

Support for customer experience changes that rewrite the rules of the contact center must start at the top, however, in creating what Forrester calls the “customer experience ecosystem,” an interdependent ecosystem of employees, partners, processes, policies, and technology on which every customer experience relies.

Blazing the Trail for Social and Mobile Service

Beyond the focus on the customer experience is a set of customer support hurdles that done right, can be the stuff of which customer service legends are made; and done wrong, can spell brand disaster: integrating not one, but two, emerging and converging customer service channels as quickly as possible: social media and mobile. The contact centers polled by Deloitte expect service and support request volume to only grow in the next one to two years with email (36%), social media (38%), voice (32%) and mobile (30%) leading the way. Today, only 33% of contact centers polled use social media as a contact channel, and only 13% are capturing the customer feedback from their social media accounts (13%).

The Elusive Summit: The 360-Degree View of the Customer

Which brings us to the next uphill climb. When asked how integrated reporting and analytics were across channels, 34% of contact centers reported somewhat, 28% said completely, but almost an equal amount (22%) said their reporting and analytics were completely separated by channel. Sixteen (16%) said they didn’t know.

It’s a long road ahead for growing contact centers. Most have a long way to go and a short time to get there in incorporating the next generation of customer service channels, and an equal number will have to move mountains within their organization to centralize service, feedback and analytics to get to a 360-degree view of the customer and a better customer experience.

To view the full Deloitte Global Contact Center Survey report, click here.

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As a Hottest Emerging Government Contractor nominee, Parature continues to drive its momentum in the government space following an 85% growth in the government vertical in 2012. More than 35 government offices and 10 federal agencies with 10 system integrators now use Parature Customer Service Software to deliver effective and efficient multi-channel service and engagement.

Parature’s increasing presence in the government space lends to the NVTC’s nod to Parature as a Hottest Buzz nominee. To date in 2013, Parature has received noted industry recognitions including placement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center, a TMC/CUSTOMER Magazine CRM Excellence Award, two Stevie Awards for Customer Service Solution Technology Partner of the Year and Best New Customer Service Relationship Management Solution (for the Parature Social Monitor), a CRM Magazine Service Leaders Award for Customer Case Management and recognition as a 2013 CRM Watchlist Winner.

“Parature’s recognition by the Northern Virginia Technology Council as a Hottest Emerging Government Contractor nominee is a fantastic honor for us,” said Duke Chung, Co-founder of Parature. “With Parature’s headquarters in the Washington, DC Metro Area, providing services to the federal government is a natural fit for us, and we’re greatly pleased with our growing success in that vertical.”

Being recognized as a Hottest Buzz nominee is also truly exciting. Our company is so appreciative of the industry recognition that it has received in 2013. It’s been a fantastic year of growth for Parature.”

Winners of the NVTC Hot Ticket Awards will be selected on June 26. The full list of Northern Virginia Technology Council Hot Ticket Award nominees can be found here: 2013 NVTC Hot Ticket Awards Nominees.

Michael Maoz, Vice President and Gartner Distinguished Analyst, author of the report, writes, “The CRM customer engagement center (CEC) refers to a logical set of technologies and business applications that are engineered to provide customer service and support, regardless of the interaction (or engagement) channel. The goal of the CEC is not only to provide service to customers as they move among communication channels – including social media – while retaining the customers’ context, but also to deliver the appropriate business rule to determine the next best action, information or process with which to engage customers.”

Says Maoz in the report, “The blend of social media engagement with CRM software is evolving the contact center into the customer engagement center. Gartner’s 2013 CRM customer engagement center Magic Quadrant looks at vendors that respond to the challenge of ‘any channel’ customer service engagement.”

“We are incredibly pleased to be positioned in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center,” says Duke Chung, Co-founder of Parature. “We believe our inclusion affirms our company’s commitment to providing a true multi-channel customer service solution, which includes the burgeoning customer service channels of social media and mobile.

“We also believe this recognition ensures that Parature’s strong and continued investments in quality, security, analytics and customer-focused care and innovation are well placed.”

To access a complimentary copy of the Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center, click here.

• 63% of consumers point to service as the most important factor in their choice of a brand.
• 44% have higher customer service expectations than they had a year ago.
• 65% report that one of their top service frustrations is unfriendly or impolite agents.
• 70% say they are likely to switch brands if they deal with agents who are unable to answer their questions.
• 62% have actually switched brands in the past year due to poor customer service.

Just like in personal relationships, keeping a customer relationship going for years takes a lot of work. And the cost of losing customers can take a heavy toll: The cost of poor customer service is estimated at £12 billion annually in the UK, and according to a report by Genesys, poor customer service costs U.S. businesses an estimated $85 billion per year in abandoned purchases or defections.

Customers never want to break up with a brand they like or have been with a long time, but sometimes they feel they’re the only ones investing in the relationship. Here are four reasons your customers will eventually decide to dump you for another brand:

1. You’re Never Available. When customers want to talk, it’s important to be available. Many brands try to syphon service requests and comments through one or two convenient or cost-effective channels, and make it nearly impossible to find another way to get in touch. According to a recent Ovum study of 8,000 consumers from across the globe, the overwhelming majority (74%) use at least three channels when interacting with an enterprise for customer related issues. When customers have a problem or just want to talk, whether that’s at 10pm or on Facebook, your brand needs to be there for support.

2. You Don’t Listen. It’s frustrating when a brand keeps asking through pop-ups and email surveys for a customer’s opinion, feedback and ideas on what it can do better, but never takes action on those things (Read 6 Simple Tips for Collecting Customer Feedback). Even more disappointing is when a customer takes the time to publicly tell a brand thank you, great job, alert them to a problem or voices a concern on their social media properties, yet is never acknowledged. J.C. Penney is an example of a company that learned this the hard way that you should always listen and respond to what your customers are saying, finally issuing a multi-channel advertising campaign to publically thank their customers.

3. You Act Like You’re Better than Them. There has never been a sadder story this year of a brand dismissing one of its biggest fans than the recent PR setback for Nutella. A super fan and longtime customer went above and beyond in showing her love for the brand by organizing a worldwide holiday in honor of Nutella, complete with a social media campaign. What did the brand do to say thanks for her superfan loyalty? It sent her a Cease and Desist letter from parent company Ferrero, which started a social customer backlash against the brand. Talk about a bad breakup.

4.  You Don’t Know Anything About Them. Personalization of customer service and the customer experience is becoming a key differentiator for brands. Take for example, Amazon, which remembers what you bought, when you bought it, and suggests other items you might like based on the little things you’ve revealed about yourself through past interactions.

Brands need to use what they know about their customers to improve service. They need to be able to remember the last time they talked with customers, what they talked about, what customer service channels they prefer, and little things that create a WOW experience. A new survey sponsored by Aspect Software notes that when contacting customer service, 64% of responding consumers say they do not feel like they are treated like valued customers, and 65% cite their frustration at having to repeat their account information, their service history and their current problem at various customer service touchpoints.

Take the four points above into consideration when working to build long-term customer relationships.

According to Forbes, Millennials “take technology for granted. They live through social media. They want the world their way, and they want it now.”

Yet for being so social and connected online, many Millennials seek to avoid face-to-face or telephone conversations at all costs, creating an evolutionary game-changer for customer service. Texting, social media and other online communication have all given this talk-without-really-talking generation the ability to communicate on their own terms: at their convenience, without having to make eye contact, without judgment, and with some degree of anonymity. They are also able to control the conversation, determining the length, the direction, and if and when they will respond (and via what channel).

Says psychologist Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other, of this collective behavioral change, “we are together, but each of us in in our own bubble, furiously connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens.”  And if you’ve watched not just Millennials, but other younger generations together at dinner, at an event or in a meeting, any face-to-face conversation is usually held in competition with another happening on a mobile device (or several).

According to Forbes, Millennials switch their attention between media platforms ( laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.) 27 times per hour on average. And as for customer service, multi-channel, multi-tasking, need-for-speed service is the norm:

• On average, 18 to 30-year-olds use 6.3 customer service channels (NICE Survey).
• 42% of 18 to 34-year-olds expect customer support on social media within 12 hours of a complaint or comment (Nielsen).
• When looking for product service or support, 71% of 16 to 24-year- olds and 65% of 25 to 34-year-olds search for a solution online first (2012 Sitel Study).
• A quarter to a third (25% to 32%) of Millennials report using the following alternative channels frequently: live chat or virtual assistant on websites, text messaging (SMS), smartphone applications, service kiosks, social networks and online communities (NICE Systems Survey).

Customer Service: The Next Generation

While Millennials may never dial your organization’s customer service number during their lifetime, they will surely Google, tweet, post and text your organization for service, and if you don’t answer, they’ll call you out on a public scale.  While your organization may offer multi-channel customer service, is it multi enough for Millennials? In addition to phone, email and online support portal, consider expanded coverage including:

• Live chat
• Social
• Mobile
• and Video

These channels allow Millennials to get service while multi-tasking on their multi-devices, communicate at their convenience, and control their comfort level when it comes to the increasingly lost art of conversation. Says Turkle in a New York Times article of the way technology is shaping us, and in turn, the way we are shaping our interactions with friends, family, followers and brands: “I’ve learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also who we are.

“Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party,” talking but yet not talking.

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