The most used customer service channel is still the phone (34%), while chatting (25%) and messaging apps (10%) are on the rise. In fact, the number of consumers using messaging apps doubled since 2017.
Phone was the most commonly used customer service contact channel in the Zendesk survey as well; 81% had used that method in the past 12 months. And similar to findings from Aspect, alternative methods were growing in popularity. In total, 67% had used live chat, social media and texting to contact customer service. Of all generations, millennials had the highest usage of live chat (62%) and social media (47%).
According to Aspect, millennials are much more likely to interact with AI-powered customer service, like intelligent assistants or chatbots, than the average (74% vs. 56%, respectively). But it's up-and-coming Gen Z that prefers nontraditional channels most, even if figures are low across the board. Twice as many consumers ages 18 to 22 prefer interacting with chatbots than the average (6% vs. 3%), while more also prefer texting (13% vs. 8%) and messaging apps (14% vs. 10%).
This was also the case in Zendesk's findings. Gen Z had the highest preference for using social media channels to connect with customer service for both simple (36%) and complex (26%) queries.
This trend toward using more channels and fewer traditional methods to contact customer service is set to continue as comfort with chatbots grows.