Loyalty by Exception: How to Serve Younger Customers When It Really Counts

In today's hyperconnected world, serving younger customers effectively is both a strategic imperative and a growing challenge for contact center leaders. This demographic, which broadly encompasses millennials and Gen Z, generally shuns traditional voice channels in favor of digital and self-service experiences.

Yet when they do pick up the phone to engage in live conversations, it's rarely casual. It's often for high stakes, with their loyalty on the line.

Younger consumers prefer digital convenience. A survey of 1,000 U.S. customers for ContactBabel's U.S. Customer Experience Decision-Makers' Guide found that even for high-emotion interactions, they're more likely than other age groups to try self-service, web chat, or email, and might even reach out via social media. Anything other than pick up the phone.

To many businesses, this might appear as a blessing, as this reduces telephony traffic and lowers service costs. But it also means that when a young customer does reach out via phone, it's because something's gone wrong and patience is wearing thin.

This low frequency of voice contact means the less they interact with your contact center, the fewer chances you have to impress them, so each of those interactions carries disproportionate weight. Handle it poorly and they might never come back. Handle it well and you could win a loyal customer in a segment where brand allegiance is notoriously fleeting.

Our research reveals that time-poor younger customers value short call/chat times and long opening hours more than older generations. But there's a key piece of data here to remember later: they value polite and friendly agents as much as any other demographic.

Younger customers are mercilessly pragmatic. If your service fails them once, they might quietly take their business elsewhere. Our data shows that younger age groups are significantly more likely to switch providers after a poor experience: the 18-34 year-old age group reports leaving a supplier due to poor CX 2.7 times more often than the 65+ age group.

For some sectors, like banking, for example, they are four times more likely to have left or not done business with that company in the first place because of poor CX.

The youngest age group has less loyalty and greater access to alternative options, and they're not afraid to use them. This dynamic means that when young customers do call, your agents must deliver not just competence but a frictionless and emotionally intelligent experience.

Designing for Their Priorities

To win in these high-stakes moments, contact centers must redesign their approaches to match the priorities of younger customers. The can do this in the following ways:

  • First-contact resolution is non-negotiable. Younger customers might be more tolerant of digital interfaces, but that tolerance does not extend to wasting time. Fifty-four percent of the 18-34 age group cite getting their issue resolved the first time as a top three priority. If they're transferred between agents, placed on hold, or have to repeat themselves, you might lose them.
  • Speed matters, but not at the expense of empathy. This generation grew up with fast search, instant answers, and app-based problem-solving. While long call queues and agent scripts feel antiquated and frustrating, speed doesn't mean cold efficiency. Young customers also rank polite and friendly agents as just as important as speed and resolution. They want to feel respected and listened to, not rushed.
  • Confidence is earned through clarity. Younger customers might have less experience dealing with businesses, making the contact center journey more intimidating. They need reassurance, not jargon. Empathetic, approachable language and clear explanations are essential for building trust during these infrequent interactions.
  • Extended hours are a competitive advantage. Long opening hours resonate more strongly with younger customers than older ones. Whether balancing work or study, they're looking for flexibility and many will reach out in the evenings or weekends. Offering extended or even asynchronous support can give you an edge.
  • Channel hopping must be seamless. While younger users are more likely to start with a digital journey, escalation to voice should be frictionless. A handoff from chat to voice shouldn't require them to start over. If it does, you&'ve introduced unnecessary effort, and they'll remember it.

Your agents are your front-line brand ambassadors in these critical moments. To serve younger customers well, you need more than call scripts and performance metrics. You need expert, emotionally intelligent professionals who can own the issue.

This means giving agents the tools to resolve problems end to end, minimizing transfers and disempowerment. It means investing in training, not just on products and systems but on soft skills such as empathy and active listening.

Make the relative rarity of a phone call from younger customers work for you: if they come away happy, they're less likely to look around elsewhere because they know they don't need to worry so much if they have to call you again.

There is a tendency in some organizations to treat customer contacts as cost centers. For younger customers, that mindset is fatal. Every moment of actual human interaction is a rare opportunity to differentiate.

In a digital-first world where brand loyalty is rare, these live interactions are gold dust. Done well, they offer a path to building long-term relationships with the very customers who are the hardest to retain.


Steve Morrell is managing director of ContactBabel, which was founded in 2001 to provide research and analysis to the U.S. and U.K. contact center industries.