The Surprising Channel Choice Preferred By Gen Z
April 7, 2026
Channel choice isn’t about age. It’s about what’s at stake.
Last week, we looked at speed and how the cost of making customers wait is steeper than most businesses realise. This week, we’re looking at channel choice — and starting with something that will challenge a few assumptions.
Gen Z wants to talk to someone
Picture how they prefer to contact you when something goes wrong.
If you imagined a chat window or a social media DM, you’re not alone. Most businesses make the same assumption. Most businesses are wrong.
According to McKinsey’s 2024 customer care research, around 70% of Gen Z customers prefer a phone call when facing a problem they can’t resolve themselves. One financial services company in the study found its Gen Z customers were 30 to 40% more likely to call than millennials — and used the phone as often as baby boomers.
The generation that texts, streams, and scrolls more than any other still picks up the phone when it matters.
It’s not about who your customer is. It’s about what they’re trying to do.
Here’s the insight worth sitting with: channel preference isn’t really a demographic question. It’s a question of complexity.
Customers across every generation are perfectly comfortable with digital channels and self-service for routine interactions. Check a balance, track an order, update an address — chat, SMS, and self-service handle all of that well.
But when an issue becomes complex, emotionally charged, or financially significant, something shifts.
People want a human voice.
They want to explain themselves once and feel heard. That instinct doesn’t change much between a 22-year-old and a 52-year-old.
The businesses getting channel strategy right aren’t designing around demographics. They’re designing around the nature of the enquiry — making digital and self-service genuinely effortless for the simple stuff, while keeping the voice channel strong and well-resourced for the moments that actually matter to customers.
Where most businesses are falling short
The harder part is continuity. A customer who tries self-service, moves to chat, and then calls shouldn’t have to start from scratch each time. The experience should follow them.
Only 13% of companies report that customer data, history, and context carry over fully across interactions and channels. Which means the vast majority are still asking customers to repeat themselves — and losing trust every time — everyone complains about this.
Channel choice isn’t about offering more options. It’s about making every option feel connected.
See what a genuinely connected Customer Experience (CX) solution looks like in practice.