Speaking The Language Of Customer Experience

Speaking The Language Of Customer Experience

What do you normally do when you order a pizza, and delivery is delayed? What would be your first action when your train get canceled? Have you experienced receiving a package shipped from other country but it does not belong to you? What would you do? The first thing I probably would do is to call customer service center. But, what if you are talking with someone who does not speak your language? How are you going to communicate your problem with a customer service agent over the phone in a different language? If you are a manager or director of a company, try to think about that situation from a customer relationship perspective. What is the client’s experience like if you are not able to give them a help due to the language barrier?

Although English has become the de facto business language of the world, in the U.S. itself, there are still 21% of the population speaks a language other than English in their homes, and more than 9% do not speak proficient English to communicate with customer services agents. More, it is not surprising that there are five main dialectal groups and more than 200 individual dialects spoken in the Mainland China. Countries like Belgium, Spain, and Luxembourg even have many monolinguals in their population. Even so, statistics show that 86% of brands have non-English speaking customers. However, only 66% of them provide multi-language customer services. You might not notice that offering support in a native language of your customer is good for the business. How is that so?

The Pursuit Of Global Market

Within a couple of years, it is expecting that non-English speaking consumers will gradually increase because most of the business has gone global. More, the emergence of technology and internet enable the markets to be no longer constrained by geographic region. The corporate marketing campaigns are launched via mobile and social media while traditional personal sales are too expensive. Therefore, potential customers are coming from all around the world even though you do not see them physically. To differentiate your company from other competitors, speaking the language of clients has become essential for companies doing business across the national borders.

The Connection With Your Target Audience

Driven by the pursuit of the global market, most of the technology-based customer services like websites and apps are offering English as a standard language for all the information. For example, how would customers start making a complaint if they do not know how to fill out an online form in another language? It is not new that browsers translate a website to find out the useful information to solve their problems. Some of them would rather just give up on the first step. However, calling can be another big challenge for some people.

Anyone would be delighted to start a conversation with someone who speaks his or her language. Starting English conversation to the non-English speaker could lose this primary connection with your customer. Think if a group does not have sufficient to communicate with customer services agent. How do you expect them to describe their experiences to you, and how could the agent fully understand their needs? Speaking the same language can make sure that both of them can understand each other to give a right solution to a problem.

The Customer Satisfaction And Loyalty

As a manager or director of the company, are you expecting customers to be satisfied with your services and be loyal to your business? If so, then using the language of your clients must start now! According to the reports, 76 out of 100 say that support in a customer’s language improves their overall experience and satisfaction. More, 58 out of 100 believe that the client’s loyalty to the brand is on the increase. It is all about customers’ experience! That is, providing a localized product is not enough.

To create a greater customer experience, you need to support them in their preferred language. Why? Let’s go thru it again.

When customer encounter problems with your products or services, they feel more comfortable to address their questions and raise inquiry in their native language. Using native speakers and web copy enables you to give the solution to them in the time of need, on time. Your support will bring out customers’ “satisfied” attitude towards “delighted” brand preachers. Although there are, so much evidence indicating that the supporting non-English speaking customers benefit both the company and the customer, some still struggle to justify the cost to expand services. According to the research report from The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), over 50 percent of agents are frustrated with the language barrier as well as possible misinterpretations.

If you do not have the human resources for the multilingual customer support? The alternative way is to contact a translation and interpreting agency. There are a large number of translation agencies offering websites localizations, voice-over, and interpreting services depending on the clients’ need. These companies regularly hire professional interpreters who have relevant knowledge and years of experience. It means that they know how to use terms which are consistent with your brand. Once you find your interpreting partners and set up multilingual customer services, you are almost there! Let me remind you of the key success factor for any call center –quality control. Monitoring the interaction between agents and customers helps you to keep a high-quality customer service, and further make any improvement.

-Yi-Hsuan Chen

Reference:

“The Growing Need for Multilanguage Customer Support”

“5 keys to effective multilingual customer support”

“Driving Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty by Speaking the Same Language(s)”

Source: https://translit.ie/blog/language-customer-experience/