Not Everyone Gets a Trophy by Bruce Tulgan

Author:Bruce Tulgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119190776
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Millennials’ Customer Mentality

Frank’s story may be a little out of the ordinary, but the example is instructive because it highlights something our research points to over and over again, which is the strong customer mind-set of Millennials. Millennials think like customers. Why? The marketplace has extended its reach beyond malls and into their homes through the web. At the same time, because Millennials have had more buying power at a younger age than any other young generation in history, marketers have targeted them more aggressively than any new consumer market in history.

Once they reach school, don’t Millennials think of themselves as students as opposed to customers? Yes and no. As the so-called customer service revolution has reached across the private and public sectors, institutions ranging from hospitals to universities have sought to incorporate the logic and practices of customer service into their standard operating procedures. Indeed, one professor at a small liberal arts college told me recently that the entire faculty of his institution was required to attend a customer service seminar led by an alumnus who is a retail entrepreneur. The goal of the seminar was to teach professors to treat everyone, students included, more like valued customers. Said the professor, “They want us to figure out the customers’ needs and expectations, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ more often, and ‘go the extra mile for our customers.’ If I know my students, that means giving them very little homework and lots of A’s. But that couldn’t possibly be what the administration has in mind, could it?”

This may seem like the exception, but our research shows that this sort of thing is increasingly common, and apparently it’s working. Here’s what a Millennial had to say about his college experience: “I had one professor who missed three classes in the fall semester of my senior year. I figured out the lost value: three out of twenty-eight class sessions out of five classes I was taking. It was almost 3 percent of my semester tuition. I made up a bill and gave it to her and told her I wanted a refund for that much. She was pretty surprised and kind of laughed, I guess. I used to skip classes, of course. But I’m paying tuition, not the other way around.”

Playing the customer or consumer role is usually Millennials’ primary experience in the public sphere prior to arriving for their first day of work as employees. Many have little or no experience on the other side of the marketplace transaction, as vendors. “It carries over into their entire way of being,” said a senior loan officer in a large financial services firm. “They come in the door with this expectant look on their face, like, ‘Are you ready to give me a good job experience now? What’s going to happen to me first? What is going to be done for me?’”

For their part, Millennials tell us they are ready to do their part, work hard, and do whatever is asked of them, within reason.

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