MarketView

Bridging the Digital Divide

MarketView 2010

January 2010

How do you bridge the digital divide and make your carwash Millennial-friendly?

What’s the first thing you do when a major news story breaks? If you’re over 30, chances are you turn on the TV and get the latest details from Fox or CNN. However if you’re a member of the Millennial Generation, those tech-savvy up-and-comers born after 1980, you’re more likely to go online, surf your favorite news websites and post your comments about the event on a blog. Then you’ll probably text or Twitter your friends about the news rather than call on the phone.

Millennials are digitally different from earlier generations. Most have rarely (if ever) picked up a newspaper. To them “banking” involves going on line or using an ATM, not interacting with a human teller. When they pull up to your tunnel, Millennials are more likely to be listening to an iPod than a radio – and when they do tune into an audio program it’s probably a podcast. While MySpace, Facebook, Flicker and YouTube are familiar to their parents, social networking and file sharing are a way of life for Millennials, the first generation of consumers to be raised entirely in a digital world.

There are about 80 million Millennials in the United States. This makes them the most sizable group of consumers since Baby Boomers. A carwash, or any business, that hopes to prosper in the future can ill afford to ignore them.

A Matter Of Control

You can make your carwash Millennial-friendly by providing these young customers with technology that gives them greater control over their transactions. Unlike their parents, who grew up having to wait for their favorite songs to come on the radio and who could only shop when stores were open, Millennials were raised in a searchable, fast-forwardable, Internet connected environment that placed them firmly in charge of their day to day transactions. They know of no other way to interact with the world.

The SiteWatch® Xpress Pay Terminal® (XPT) appeals to Millennials by allowing them to control their transactions at your carwash. Being able to view available wash options at their own pace at an XPT without having to depend on a salesperson makes Millennials feel more comfortable with the transaction process – and this in turn makes them more receptive to trading up to your better packages.

If you have any doubts that Millennials are often more at home interacting with a terminal than a salesperson, consider the following:

• According to the respected Convergys market research group, Millennials are 43% more likely to use automated technology for customer service.
• A 2009 survey by KRC Research found that only 32% of Millennials (ages 18-29) preferred in-person banking. By contrast, half the Baby Boomers reported that they’d never banked with a computer.

Millennial Pie

Being in control of their transactions is important not only to Millennials, but to a growing number of tech-savvy consumers of all ages. Forward-thinking businesses are responding to this trend by using technology to give customers more power over the course of their transactions. A case in point is Domino’s.

In 2008, the nation’s largest home delivery pizza chain introduced a new online ordering website that allows customers to view a simulated image of a pizza as they select the size, sauce and toppings for their pie. As customers create their orders, the image of the pizza on their computer screen changes.

Dominos’ new ordering system, which gives customers control over the pizza building process, has been a huge success increasing revenues, profits and repeat business according to the company. On line orders already account for close to 20% of Domino’s volume and are likely to increase further. A Domino’s customer quoted in the Wall Street Journal explained that he orders on line rather than over the phone because the human order takers are “usually busy and not paying much attention and they leave something out.”

The morale of this story: Reliability, consistency and control are the key ingredients that Millennials look for when ordering pizza or purchasing any other consumer good or service, including a carwash. Automating the transaction process makes it easier for businesses to meet these criteria and earn the loyalty of Millennial consumers.

Stay In Touch On Line

Aside from illustrating the importance of transaction control, the success of Domino’s new ordering system drives home another key point about Millenniums: they prefer to interact with businesses online.

This should come as no surprise; after all as Charles Golvin, analyst with Forrester Research pointed out in Business Week, Millennials are “the first native online population”. Or, as the Pew Internet & American Life Project observed, Millennials are “digital natives in a land of digital immigrants”.

Millennials have never known life without the Internet, so any carwash hoping to reach members of this generation will have to be able to connect with them on line. Click here to learn how SiteWatch Website Connect can help you communicate with customers and sell carwashes over the Internet.

Of course Millennials do more than buy online. For them, the Internet, social networking, and texting are also part of a multi-dimensional digital bond that links them to one another and the outside world. According to Jupiter Research four out of five of people under 30 send text messages daily. A 2008 Advertising Age study, found that 36% of New Hampshire voters under 30 visited candidates’ social network profiles, compared to 15% of older voters.

Speed Matters

Increase your transaction speed with DRB Systems' FastPass.

Whether they help consumers control transactions or make purchases on line, technological enhancements tend to share one thing in common – they save time. This is especially important to Millennials who, having grown up with high speed Internet access, show little tolerance for waiting. For example, in a study looking at generational trends in food purchase decisions, 45% of Millennials said they don’t have time to eat at home, compared to only 22% of Baby Boomers. Click here to read how SiteWatch FastPass® can help you increase transaction speed.

Loyalty and Service Count Too

Their preference for terminals over human-assisted sales transactions and their emphasis on speed, might lead you to think that Millennials don’t place much stock in old-fashioned loyalty and customer service. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Having come of age during challenging economic times, Millennials are attuned to loyalty programs that offer rewards and discounts. A study conducted by Colloquy found that participation in loyalty programs by 18-25 year olds jumped by 32% in 2007 compared to 19% for the population as a whole. Almost half (46.4%) of Millennials said that participating in loyalty programs was more important during a recession compared to 32.3% of the general population that felt this way. Click here to read how SiteWatch can help you run loyalty promotions.

Despite their differences with their parents when it comes to how they prefer to conduct transactions, Millennials and Baby Boomers have strikingly similar views about personal service. In the 2009 KRC generational banking trend survey, Millennials and Baby Boomers both ranked “good customer service” as the number one priority in rating a bank.

The shared emphasis on good customer service may not be the only thing Millennials have in common with their parents. With each passing year (or even month!) a growing number of older consumers are being prodded by their children to embrace new technology. The influence of Millennials is rippling up the generational ladder, persuading more consumers in older age groups to try new technologies. This is no different from what Baby Boomers did with their parents; nudging them ever so gently from the “pre-tech” world into the realm of VCRs, cell phones, voice mail, and personal computers.

In fact, even as Millennials blaze new paths, the technological gap separating them from older consumers seems to be narrowing. A recent study by Deloitte found that 62% of Millennials used their cell phones as entertainment devices compared to 47% of consumers in the next age bracket (up to 41 years old). This 15 point gap may seem substantial, until you consider that the 47% of older consumers using cell phones for entertainment was only one percentage point higher than the 46% of Millennials who used their cell phones that way the last time Deloitte asked the same question eight months earlier!

It appears that technology is not only a bridge to the Millennial Generation; it’s also becoming increasingly important to reaching older customers too.