They’re Not Making Customers Like They Used To: Changing Customer Service Trends And Expectations

Your customers–every single one of them–have been changed by their exposure to web-based commerce. Regardless of the type of business you’re in, the customer service and customer experience expectations of your customers have been changed forever. It doesn’t matter if you’re a retail bank or a hair stylist or a clothing store; there’s no going back to a pre-Web mentality if you want to survive and prosper with the customers of today and tomorrow. Customers today expect every business in every industry to achieve “digital parity.” In other words, your business needs to be able to offer all the advantages, and be as easy to do business with, as the best of what your customer has encountered online and in self-service solutions. These changes in expectations are most completely realized in the newest generation of customers, the digitally native millennial generation. But change has also come to their elders, customers who aren’t millennials but have been influenced by a millennial outlook. Here are some specifics of what it means to achieve digital parity in your brick and mortar business. See them all at Forbes.