US millennials want mobile service service that acts as a personal assistant

Millennials are mobile natives – preferring and expecting the world to be available to them on their mobile devices, wherever they are. As the upcoming customer base – and revenue base – of mobile service providers, this generation will have a significant impact on the mobile service of the future.

To gain insight into millennial expectations for their mobile service in 2022, CSG International polled nearly 1,000 millennials across the US, UK, Australia, and Brazil through a study conducted by an independent research firm.

American millennials believe in the power of AI-powered personal assistants. When identifying a feature that would most strongly influence a millennial to spend more money on their mobile service in five years, US respondents selected “a mobile service that acts as a personal assistant that can set meetings, post phone content to social media” as the number one driver of additional spending.

39% of US respondents think millennials will seek out non-traditional providers (e.g. Google, Amazon, or others yet to be identified). Only 24% of US respondents think millennials will prefer to connect via public Wi-Fi or other free services. Not as wary of privacy as we thought: Americans are likely to share data in exchange for benefits.

Participants in the US were significantly more likely to feel that millennials will share their mobile data in exchange for entertainment recommendations and customized mobile service packages. They were also more likely to feel that millennials will share their location in exchange for small conveniences.

86% of US respondents said that millennials would be very likely or somewhat likely to allow their mobile service provider to make entertainment recommendations based on content they’ve watched or listened to before.

85% of American participants said that millennials would be very likely or somewhat likely to allow their mobile service provider to use their location services to provide small conveniences, such as a pop up prompt saying “I see you have a flight in 24 hours, would you like to check in for your flight now?”

77% of US participants said that millennials would be very likely or somewhat likely to allow their provider to use their mobile data to identify and recommend customized mobile service packages to better fit the way each individual consumer uses their phone.

63% of US respondents said that millennials would be very likely or somewhat likely to allow their mobile service provider to use their mobile data to track websites visited and other usage data to provide insights to advertisers to create personalized ads, tailored to individual interests.

Participants in the US were significantly more likely than those surveyed in other countries to feel that millennials would exclusively use a single source for accessing all available video content if such a service were available through their mobile provider.

50% of US participants felt that millennials would be “very likely” to use a service exclusively, assuming a provider could offer a single source for accessing all available video content.

38% of American respondents said that millennials would most likely rely on an online provider such as Netflix or Amazon five years from now as their one place for video content, while 29% predicted a mobile provider would be their single source for content.