Comments on McKinsey’s “The Evolution of Customer Care”

Many of the pressures facing Contact Center leaders today are described as “new” — but most are familiar challenges showing up in modern forms.

This article is part of our Contact Center Management Series — a collection of articles that bring together practical guidance and insights to help Contact Centers run better and deliver stronger results.

The McKinsey Article — and Why It’s Worth Commenting On

McKinsey published the article and accompanying podcast on 8 July 2024, exploring how AI, Gen Z expectations, and operational pressures are shaping Customer Care.

The McKinsey article is here.

Below are several excerpts I found particularly interesting — followed by my perspective as a Contact Center practitioner.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

One of the Partners in the Evolution of Customer Care article shared:

Contact center leaders face unprecedented pressure in various forms: operational pressure to be efficient and reduce costs, enhance the customer experience, manage employees in increasingly complex environments, and expand the contact center’s role to include more advisory or consultative selling to build loyalty.

This observation could just as easily have been written in 2024, 2015, 2009 — or even 2002.

When you read the ‘unprecedented’ forms of pressure you realize that they haven’t changed very much. It’s that they manifest differently.

For example, a ‘complex environment’ in 2007 might have included email but in 2024 it also includes chat and social.

Once you’ve lived through adding a new channel, you understand what it takes — and you carry that know-how forward.

Selling Has Always Been Part of the Conversation

Now on to an observation on sales or ‘selling’. I don’t think that’s a new or unprecedented pressure.

At Heartland Music where I was VP, Call Center & Distribution Operations in the 90s, we designed and implemented an extensive upselling and cross-selling program in 1996.

If you bought Dolly Parton you might also like Loretta Lynn.

And when I began teaching Contact Centers professionally in the early 2000s our ‘Sell the Upsell’ training course was one of our most popular. For some Centers, sales was and remains a natural part of the Customer conversation – given that it’s done at the right time and in the right way.

This isn’t a criticism of the article — there is a great deal of value in it.

It’s just always interesting to see a description of a Contact Center today that reads almost word for word like a headline from 20 years ago.

Now on with the excerpts.

Channel Preferences

One area where the article usefully challenges assumptions is channel preference.

McKinsey writes:

“Our research revealed some surprising findings about Gen Z’s communication preferences with companies. Contrary to what might be expected, their behavior isn’t drastically different from millennials, Gen X, or even boomers.

When facing an unsolvable problem, about 70 percent of Gen Z individuals prefer to make a phone call, a share similar to older generations.”

Email – “Our research also touched on email preferences across different Customer segments.”

McKinsey writes:

“Surprisingly, about 70 percent of customers still prefer using email to resolve issues, despite its decreasing popularity among organizational leaders.

Leaders often consider email a challenging channel to manage because it’s hard to track and measure compared with phone or chat interactions.

This creates a disconnect, as customers appreciate the asynchronous nature of email—it allows them to send a message at their convenience, while someone else works on the issue later.

This discrepancy poses challenges for organizations as they plan future communication strategies.”

Email is Not Dead

Now and then I’ve seen a ‘think-tank’ publish that ‘Email is dead!’. Without any data to back up the drama.

Sure, I bet there are industries & organizations out there that don’t receive much email. Or even just switch off the receipt of email as a channel which is of course a business decision.

But what struck me most from this particular excerpt was this – “…it allows them to send a message at their convenience, while someone else works on the issue..”

Just this past week my husband emailed our local Doctor asking that certain forms or prescriptions be ready for us to pick up when we stop by their office the following week.

We also emailed our housekeeper, who has a key to the house, to let them know that we’d be away and what particular tasks we’d like to be taken care of while we were gone.

Now stop and think about your own Customers. What kinds of requests might they make where they would prefer not to be involved in the ‘work’ itself.

Service – “Gen Z individuals in premium segments expect high levels of service…”

McKinsey writes:

“Additionally, our work in financial services highlighted another unique aspect of Gen Z, especially in the premium segments.

Unlike millennials, Gen Z individuals in these segments expect high levels of service, akin to what baby boomers expect. They view phone service as a justified expectation for the fees they pay, demanding quality assistance and a positive experience as part of their service package.

This insight is crucial for businesses aiming to cater to this demographic effectively.

“Leadership in this area really requires courage.”

This next point is where the article resonated most strongly with me.

McKinsey writes:

“Leadership in this area really requires courage.

I’m often underwhelmed when we are asked, “Hey, do you have a North Star vision? What do you want out of your customer care, your servicing function?”

The answers are often very incremental: “I’d love to see a 5 percent improvement in this. I’d like our budgets to be down, our handle times to go down, and our customer satisfaction score to go up slightly.”

We need to think bolder than that. Being a courageous leader means having a plan and setting an aspiration that is difficult and makes people uncomfortable, and then seeing it through.”

I found myself nodding repeatedly as I read this. Because we do need to be bolder in the industry.

And I have a belief around one driver of why McKinsey hears Customer Care leadership talk about incremental goals (I want to see CSAT go up, I want to see AHT go down).

As compared to setting a bolder aspiration and plan.

Why So Many Leaders Default to Incremental Thinking

Unlike finance, law, or marketing — disciplines with well-established education paths — most Contact Center leaders learn the profession on the job, often without formal preparation for strategic leadership.

What this McKinsey article reinforces — intentionally or not — is that many of the challenges facing Contact Center leaders are not new.
What is new is the pace, visibility, and complexity with which those challenges now show up.

That makes judgment, experience, and deliberate capability-building more important than ever — not just new tools or new terminology.

Thank You for Reading

I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected.

You can drop me a line anytime, or subscribe on our site.

Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com