As Gen Z asserts itself in the workplace, the writing is on the wall for app providers who don’t give them what they want.
Just ask Spenser Skates. “They just won’t use something if it’s not the way they expect,” says the cofounder and CEO of digital analytics platform Amplitude.
His company sees that clash firsthand as its younger employees grapple with training on Salesforce, an early B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) product. “It’s getting long in the tooth in terms of its usability,” says Skates, whose clients include Ford, NBC, and Walmart.
For Salesforce, Oracle, and other legacy B2B SaaS players, times are changing—fast.
“I’m a millennial, and so it’s like, ‘Okay, you’re expected to read the manual,’” Skates tells me from San Francisco. Gen Z? Forget it. “You’ve got a few seconds to go do the thing, or that’s it and they’re out.”
There’s an obvious explanation for Gen Z’s behavior. “They’ve grown up with [smart]phones and tablets, and this is the expectation that software is easy to use and being trained on all of these consumer-side apps,” Skates says. “And so now that they’re entering the workforce for the first time, it’s like, ‘Hey, that better be the experience as well.’”
One consumer app has shaped that mindset more than others. “TikTok, in particular, has absolutely nailed where they allow you get to what you want super quickly,” Skates says. “You don’t even think about having to learn it, or set it up, or anything else. You just start using it.”
Skates points to Slack, collaborative design tool Figma (which rival Adobe tried to buy for $20 billion), and connected workspace Notion as examples of “modern” workplace apps with the same sensibility. Amplitude, which helps clients use customer data to improve their products and services, recently launched an easy-to-use version of its analytics tool.
“If you don’t build software this way, you’re going to be dead,” Skates predicts. “It’s all about, how do you create a great user experience?”
For app developers seeking to build trust with Gen Z workers, Skates shares a few pointers on delivering such an experience.
First, don’t overwhelm users with too much content and too many options, he says. “You’ve got to put the most important thing front and center.”
Increasingly, that emphasis on simplicity sees workplace apps conceal bells and whistles. “It’s hidden behind menus and other stuff so that the default experience isn’t like that,” Skates says.
The app should be fast too. “Switching between content, the stuff better happen quickly and you don’t have to have a lot of clicks to get to your content.”
Native collaboration is another key feature. “Being able to have something where you can interact with a coworker live on a web app like that, that’s a really big one,” Skates says.
And be sure to sweat the design details. For example, over the past five years, navigation menus for web apps have moved from the top to the left, Skates notes. “That actually makes it easier to navigate through.”
The good news? None of this is rocket science.
“If you just take a bunch of these principles that these great consumer apps have done, you’re already ahead of 90% of the rest of the industry,” Skates says.
But when it comes to Gen Z, app developers must still do their homework.
“Go talk to them, watch them use the software,” Skates urges. “You’re gonna find all sorts of crazy things about what they think or what their intuition is.” Yet Skates still sees companies build software in a vacuum rather than get people to use it during development. “If you don’t,” he warns, “you’re cooked, you’re done, you’re left out.”
Skates’ No. 1 piece of advice for business leaders who want to win Gen Z’s trust? Download TikTok, which offers a window into their “different” mentality.
“Authenticity is really, really important,” Skates says. “A lot of the corporate formality, they just hate.”
At ease.
Nick Rockel
nick.rockel@consultant.fortune.com
