Customer service leaders influenced by a blanket negative portrayal of young people in the UK may fear recruiting their next batch of staff, but Natalie Calvert says Generation Y is not only misunderstood, but presents the opportunity to deliver dynamic, personalised service to a level that is hard to create today.
The UK’s youth - Generation Y or the ‘net natives’ to use two of the common monikers - are stereotyped as spoilt individuals with unrealistic expectations about what society, and most specifically their employers, should give them. This research, in which 40 per cent of 16-18 year olds will apparently demand a laptop before they even consider going to work, sadly appears to enforce the negative perception of young people who will be soon joining customer service operations across the country.
However, having studied this issue at great length for our Generation X/Y programme (the whitepaper can be downloaded here), we at Calcom have a different view. In our opinion, the next influx of employees are not inherently unemployable or unsuited for customer service roles, they are just struggling to bridge the same generation gap that the older generation see as insurmountable.
For example, the seasoned business professional might be frustrated that new starts disobey corporate rules that have been in place for years. But if we look at this issue from the perspective of Generation Y, we might see that many of these rules are draconian and have no bearing on the quality of work being produced. Similarly, while the older age group thinks about how they can progress their career at the same employer, younger people increasingly look to gain experience at multiple companies before moving on to the next stage of their employment.
We found that these subtle differences cause major conflicts with customer service operations and the whitepaper offers a range of advice on how to resolve these difficulties. The first step is to acknowledge the differences and be empathic, no matter how illogical it might seem, and remember that no one is intrinsically right or wrong about working practices - if the older generation had found the magic formula, all customer service operations would run perfectly.
Continuing this line of thinking, there are signs that the next generation of workers could refresh working practices in a positive way. Returning to the research referenced earlier, a third of net natives say they are more likely to work out of hours if provided with smartphones and laptops, while 15 per cent are happy to share their location with their employers through applications such as Foursquare.
With consumerisation of IT blurring the lines between work and home life, we may find that the always-online generation are happy to work when required, using technology to seamlessly shift between playing games and talking to friends, to managing a few urgent work-related chat sessions or giving input to email requests. If the price for this flexibility is to allow staff access to social media at work and relaxing the dress code, are customer service operations wise to say no?
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