Gen Z is quickly becoming the key customer demographic for UK businesses, expecting seamless, hyper-personalised, omnichannel experiences. Almost half (48%) of Gen Z customers have abandoned a business due to poor Customer Experience (CX), compared to just 12% of over-65s.
In 2025, delivering exceptional CX means meeting each generation where they are, and Gen Z is leading the way in digital-first interactions. No demographic is more important than another, but it is important to monitor trends, especially when younger customers are shaping the future of CX.
The expectation gap between organisations and Gen Z is widening.
Here are three ways to create consistent CX to satisfy Gen Z and improve sentiment across all customer cohorts.
1. Personalise Their Experiences
45% of Gen Z expect a personalised experience during every interaction, such as anticipating their needs, acknowledging their interaction history, or remembering their preferences. When used well, data builds trust by allowing businesses to create interactions that feel seamless and relevant regardless of channel, making each touchpoint the continuation of a coherent customer journey.
To meet this expectation, organisations must move away from data silos. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) pulls together data from a wide range of underlying sources into a single pane of glass, giving an organisation’s contact centre workers the real-time insights they need to support customers effectively.
2. Offer Omni-channel
Failure to provide omni-channel experiences risks long-term loyalty and brand reputation. While 39% of UK Gen Z customers list channel choice among the top three factors when contacting an organisation, 61% of 16 to 24-year-olds report having to call businesses frequently because digital self-service tools failed to solve their problems. This disconnect affects the Customer Effort Score (CES), an increasingly decisive metric that tracks how much effort a customer must expend to resolve their query.
Businesses should offer a wide range of digital channels, with each touchpoint easy to access and tailored to the preferences of their most frequent users. Customers should be able to start an interaction on one platform and continue it on another without having to start over.
3. Don’t Replace Human Interactions
When automation supports, rather than replaces, human connection, it creates a faster and more effective experience. AI can help businesses deliver faster, more efficient interactions across all channels of engagement. Fortunately, Gen Z has always been open to automation, though only when it enhances their CX.
Whether an interaction starts on the phone, via webchat, or in an app, it should feel hyper-personalised and intelligent from start to finish. During interactions, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and generative AI can suggest next-best actions for contact centre agents based on business-relevant pre-approved knowledge articles, reducing the time spent searching for answers. Further AI-automated processes can help monitor customer satisfaction, sentiment and quality management, making all of these metrics readily available to improve agent performance.
Bridging the Gen Z Gap
Supporting a growing number of channels is imperative to solving Gen Z customer queries efficiently. By focusing on reducing effort, improving personalisation and deploying intelligent automation, organisations can deliver Gen Z experiences that earn loyalty and trust, regardless of the customer’s age.
Martin Taylor is Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru
Available in over 150 countries, storm® is the only cloud platform trusted to run national blue-light emergency services and its CX solutions have delivered the highest customer satisfaction scores in multiple industries for many of the globe’s largest organisations. Its brain® AI services provide leading automated and human-assist capabilities to bolster contact centre performance.
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