Photo by Malte Helmhold on Unsplash

“Stop Calling Me!” — A Lesson from Millennials and Generation Z

Your customer experience sucks! And your process is antiquated!

Ryan M. Raiker, MBA
7 min readJul 29, 2021

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Digital is the new normal so why are businesses so insistent on using analog means of communication? Introducing Corporate America to Generation Mute brought to you the courtesy of Generation ME, ME, ME.

Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash

Companies have traditionally thought of phone calls as the best avenue to provide customer service, address problems and issues, or promote new products and services. However, research reveals that millennials and Gen-Z really don’t like answering the phone.

Generation ME, ME, ME were gifted smartphones as teenagers, and before that, they were customizing their MySpace and if old enough (and geeky enough) their Xanga profiles long before the 2007 launch of the iPhone. Their entire life has been customized to fit them entirely. The mere concept of the MySpace profile is cringy to think about today: a complete profile to label one’s closest friends, custom profiles to share your favorite color and HTML decor (or whatever you could copy from your bestie), while simultaneously broadcasting whatever crappy music was your top profile song that month so everyone else who came to your profile knew just how deep of an affection you had for the Backstreet Boys or GreenDay.

This is the same generation that when they participated in competitive sports and came in second or third place in the competition, they were crafted custom Runner Up trophies. Their Spotify playlist is curated for them, their Amazon shopping carts suggest what they should buy, their social media is literally in a feed to the precise algorithm that is exactly what they know, love, and crave.

Everything they’ve created is remarkably about, well, them. Just pick up any single person’s iPhone today…now go find the settings app icon. Mine is on my first page, however, yours or someone else’s could be on any single one of the home screens. It is completely custom to the user!

Everything this generation uses is custom to them, and always on to service them when and…

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Ryan M. Raiker, MBA

TEDxSpeaker | Former Consultant | Process Expert | Marketer | Digital Guy | Adjunct Professor & Learner. I write about tech, marketing, business, and more.