Solis is featured and quoted throughout Kevin Delaney’s article “Defying Demographics: Today’s Hyperconnected Consumer ‘Generation’” on Cisco’s Connected Futures site. Solis is introduced into the piece defining his concept of Generation C: ““Generation C is a concept I developed to categorize this new connected customer.”

Unlike traditional demographic groups, Solis explains, Gen C is “psychographic” — defined not by age, geography, or income, but by behavior. That is, digital behavior. Its members could include your precocious pre-teen or your tech-savvy grandmother. “I found by studying the customer journey,” Solis said, “that those living a digital lifestyle — mobile first, using the most popular apps to streamline their life and how they communicate —tend to mimic or share behaviors in how they go through the journey, regardless of age.”

Solis also discusses how our devices, apps and online platforms have made us “accidental narcissists” before delving into the importance of creating micro-moments and mobile first customer experiences. “The OS, the platform, the way you engage with apps, the user interface, is just completely different than the traditional desk top or laptop,” Solis argued.

Solis adds that to capture micro-moments, marketers must drop old assumptions about customer experience, Solis believes. A certain 19th-century Russian novelist would no doubt agree. To connect with fast-moving Gen C customers, everyone in the organization has to be agile. That takes top-down leadership. From the CEO and CMO, for sure. But also the CIO.

“I think the best thing that businesses can do is get a little empathy,” Solis emphasizes. “Instead of trying to understand their customers, they look at them and say, ‘well this behavior’s different than me, I don’t think it’s right that they’re always on their devices, they should get outside and play more.”

The article concludes with Solis’ best practices for delivering micro-moments. Among them:

• Identify key mobile-moments and what happens in them: Why, where, and how people search for information and how they form a new customer journey map.
• Understand their goals and aspirations for doing so.
• Use search insights to identify new trends or find patterns of intent that you might not be addressing.
• Invest in technology that commits your company to being “there” in mobile moments—comprehensively and consistently—to inform, engage, and empower people to make decisions and take actions their way.

Read the entire article here: https://connectedfutures.cisco.com/article/defying-demographics-todays-hyperconnected-consumer-generation/