transcosmos Adel Zsurzsan Talks About Being Multilingual

One special characteristic of the transcosmos culture is diversity. With headquarters based in UK, Central Europe, and Asia, transcosmos takes pride in its team of multilingual employees and their unique ability to bridge language barriers and cross-cultural differences.
Adel ZsurzsanWe’d like to let you peek into the lives of transcosmos employees, and the first one in this series of interviews is Adel Zsurzsan, transcosmos Business Development Advisor based in the Hungary office. If you feel that her name sounds familiar, that’s probably because you’ve been seeing her byline here in the transcosmos blog.
Yes, that’s her. (And yes, the transcosmos family is made of beautiful people.)
In this interview, Adel talks about herself, how she became multilingual, how it’s like to be a multilingual customer support agent, and the perks of being one. She also talks about why global companies need multilingual customer support in their team.
Let’s get to know her!

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Can you tell us about your job here at transcosmos?

After I finished my studies I started to work for transcosmos as a Dutch-English speaker IT support analyst. I was lucky to be part of an amazing team and the transcosmos family. This gave me the opportunity to learn how to handle customers and be a team player. It was a totally new world for me. The world of a global company with multilingual staff. It was a great experience!
I have now been with the company for 2 years. In January of this year I started my current role, as a Business Development Advisor which opened the door for my future career. It is a position that I am really enjoying; my role is to find new clients for transcosmos and help the company grow.

transcosmos Debrecan Team

Adel with transcosmos Management Team at Debrecan, or, as they like to call themselves, “The Back Office” team.

Tell us something about yourself and how you became multilingual.

I was born in Transylvania, Romania but actually in a Hungarian environment growing up in a town close to the Hungarian-Romanian border.
My mother is Romanian but my father is of Hungarian origin. This is why we had to use two different languages in our day to day life. I can still remember as a little girl how much I loved to speak these languages and the learning process was very natural. When I started elementary education my parents enrolled me to a bilingual school, where I followed the principal subjects in Romanian, and the others in Hungarian.

How many languages do you speak?

My native language is Hungarian and second Romanian. At elementary school I started to learn German and French and later in high school I focused on German where I successfully passed The ÖSD (Österreichisches Sprachdiplom Deutsch), a state-approved examination and assessment system for German as a Foreign Language.
After high school I decided to learn a new language and I was successful in gaining a place at The University of Debrecen – Faculty of Dutch Language, Literature and Culture. Following my graduation from University, I decided to study privately in Spanish as I found it similar to the Romanian language and hey, why not?

In which language do you think?

Not easy to answer this question, I think most of the multilinguals are thinking in their first language but it really depends on the environment an individual finds themselves in.
When I’m with my Romanian family/ friends it’s easier to think in Romanian because sometimes it can be very confusing to think in one language and speak in another one.

How’s a day like in the life a Multilingual Customer Support Representative?

Our broad range of language skills gives us the ability to handle more calls and e-mails in these different languages. When receiving an incoming call the identity of the caller is always indicated via the dialing code, so we have a few seconds to prepare for that particular language. It should be confusing sometimes, but after a while they get used it.

What do you like best about being a Multilingual Customer Support Rep?

Being a customer support representative is a good opportunity to work in a multilingual environment and improve your language and communication skills. It also means being able to help many people, regardless of culture and language.
Dealing with clients from all over the world gives a better understanding of different cultures. In certain moments it can also be stressful and requires a lot of patience, however with some practice you can learn how to deal with the most difficult clients which can be useful in other situations in life too.

In few words, what are the Top 3 Benefits of being multilingual?

1. Ability to communicate with different people, of different cultures, in different countries.
2. Knowing several languages seems to help you learn other languages.
3. Bilingualism gives you more job opportunities and greater social mobility.

Why do you think enterprises need a Multilingual Customer Support?

Even if the largest global companies have their own service desk or call centre, they’re not always capable to cover all the languages needed to support their employees and customers. This is where transcosmos steps in. From our global locations we can offer support in more than 23 European and Asian languages at very affordable cost.
transcosmos competitive advantages in the Contact Centre market is to hire multilingual agents to be able to handle calls, e-mails in different languages. This reduces the number or agents, which is beneficial for our clients.
One of the reasons why leaders of transcosmos have chosen Hungary for its European centre is the multiculturalism. Hungary is situated in the heart of Europe with large amount of immigrants from around the world. This gives us the capability to support almost all of the European languages from only one location.

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Follow Adel on Twitter and LinkedIn. Or follow her blog posts by subscribing on the transcosmos blog!

 

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