The way people communicate has changed faster in the last decade than in the previous fifty years combined. Phone calls feel intrusive. Email feels slow. For the two largest consumer demographics — Gen Z and Millennials — messaging is the default mode of communication, and it has been for years.
According to Webex research, over 70% of Gen Z and Millennials prefer communicating over digital messaging channels rather than voice or email. That’s not a preference at the margins. That’s the majority, and it has direct implications for any business that wants to reach, convert, or retain these customers.
Communication Preferences of Gen Z and Millennials
Gen Z grew up with smartphones as a given. Messaging wasn’t something they adopted — it was the baseline. Millennials witnessed the transition from landlines to SMS to messaging apps, and moved with it at each stage. Both cohorts have arrived at the same place: they prefer quick, asynchronous text exchanges over any form of synchronous communication that requires scheduling or interruption.
The common thread is a preference for communication that fits around life rather than demanding attention on someone else’s schedule. A message can wait five minutes without anyone feeling slighted. A phone call that goes to voicemail is, for many in these generations, already a lost conversation.
Convenience and Control: Why Messaging Wins
Messaging gives recipients control in a way that voice doesn’t. You can read a message when you’re ready, formulate a response without pressure, and maintain multiple conversations without the cognitive switching cost of back-to-back calls.
That control matters particularly when the communication is with a business. Nobody wants to be put on hold. Nobody wants to repeat their issue to three different agents. A message thread preserves context — the conversation history is right there, no re-explaining required. This is one reason messaging-based customer service consistently scores higher on satisfaction metrics than phone-based equivalents.
For businesses, the asymmetry runs the other way: messaging scales better. A well-built conversational flow handles hundreds of simultaneous conversations without additional headcount. A phone line doesn’t.
The Impact of Technology on Communication Habits
Smartphones became ubiquitous at exactly the moment Gen Z was growing up and Millennials were entering the workforce. The result is a generation (two, really) for whom 24/7 connectivity is the norm — but connectivity on their terms. Read receipts, typing indicators, and the ability to communicate in short bursts rather than sustained exchanges all shaped expectations about what “good communication” looks like.
Remote work accelerated this further. When colleagues are spread across time zones, asynchronous messaging isn’t just preferred — it’s the only thing that works. The pandemic years normalised messaging-first communication for entire organisations that previously defaulted to phone calls and in-person meetings.
The Role of Social Media in Normalising Messaging with Businesses
Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and WhatsApp didn’t just change how people communicate with friends — they changed what people expect from businesses. If someone can message a friend and get a reply in minutes, the expectation follows naturally that a business should be equally responsive.
The platforms reinforced this by building business-facing tools directly into the messaging layer. Instagram DMs are now a legitimate customer service channel. WhatsApp Business handles order confirmations, appointment reminders, and support tickets at scale. Messenger has been a commerce channel since 2016. The boundary between “social” messaging and “business” messaging has blurred to the point where it barely exists.
Customers who have grown up in this environment don’t distinguish between the two. They expect businesses to communicate the way their friends do — promptly, conversationally, in the apps they’re already using.
What This Means for Businesses
The gap between what these customers expect and what most businesses deliver is still wide. Many companies still treat their primary customer communication channel as email or a ticketing system — channels that Gen Z and Millennials actively avoid or deprioritise.
The businesses closing that gap are doing a few things differently:
They’re meeting customers on messaging platforms. WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and Messenger aren’t afterthoughts — they’re primary channels. Marketing campaigns, customer service, purchase flows, and appointment booking all happen in-thread.
They’re using automation to deliver the speed that messaging implies. A message that doesn’t get a reply for 24 hours defeats the purpose. Conversational automation — not chatbots that say “I don’t understand that” — delivers the immediate response the channel demands, and escalates to a human when the conversation genuinely requires it.
They’re treating the conversation as the relationship. A message thread with a customer is a relationship record. Every interaction builds context. Businesses that treat their messaging inbox as a CRM rather than a ticket queue build significantly stronger retention.
The Practical Implication
If your business is still treating WhatsApp as a notification broadcast channel, or Instagram DMs as an afterthought, or Messenger as a relic from 2019 — you’re not where your customers are.
The businesses we work with that have invested in conversational channels — DM automation for Instagram, WhatsApp Business API, Click-to-Message ad campaigns — consistently see stronger acquisition numbers and better retention than equivalent competitors still operating email-first.
That’s not a coincidence. It’s the natural result of meeting the two largest consumer cohorts where they already spend their communication attention.
The question isn’t whether messaging matters for your business. It does. The question is how quickly you close the gap between what you’re currently doing and what your customers already expect.