The Importance of Multi-lingual Customer Support for the Modern Business

Multilingual Customer SupportMost companies with any view of major expansion will want to aim for even bigger success in today’s global market economy. Competitive but with countless virtues, there are several opportunities for businesses to reap the benefits of worldwide appeal by fully meeting the needs of their customers and offering proficient multilingual and multicultural customer support.
Speaking to the customer in their language and dialect builds up a relationship that will put you in great stead for further progression into the global marketplace and boost the credibility of your brand. The language of business is not strictly English, in fact Spanish is fast becoming one of the most spoken foreign languages in the world and in terms of business transactions, Mandarin, Arabic and French are also top of the list of languages. Companies stand to lose out on substantial revenue and website traffic by not optimising their customer support strategy for non-English speaking customers.
Speaking on bilingual customer support, Brent Leary, co-founder of CRM Essentials, management consulting and advisory firm confirmed that some businesses are trailing behind when it comes to bilingual support services. “A lot of companies don’t think about potential foreign customers as they develop their businesses – until they suddenly discover that social technologies have given them a global reach,” he said.
With the huge scope and plurality of today’s business economy, enterprises are under immense pressure to maintain customer loyalty and it could prove costly to not extend your support services in line with the diversity of your customers. Which leads us onto our next point:

How do businesses go about being a multilingual, multicultural powerhouse of a corporation?

1. Assess important is customer service in your business model. Customer service on a base level is obviously important but the extent to which will help you decide how detrimental bilingual services are for your market. Doing this will also determine whether you utilise off-shore multilingual call centres or have your own in-house team.
2. Identify your market. The next step is for you to determine who exactly your market is and whittle them down to identify what countries and customer segments constitute your target market. Do you need to identify primary and possibly secondary languages to accommodate customer preferences? What are the local dialects and customs that will affect how you deliver your customer service?
3. Know the scope of your customers’ queries. You want to consider the scope of your customer queries and what category they fall into. Broadly, they come under one of the four: informational; transactional; advice-seeking; and diagnostic. As a rule of thumb, the more complex the queries you receive, the higher the need for bilingual services but these are all factors to consider in your quest to deliver exceptional customer service without any boundaries.
transcosmos specialises in the delivery of world class Customer support, IT Service Desk and Infrastructure Support tailored to your specific business needs. With 21 years in industry we’ve developed innovative solutions to improve the customer experience. Let’s talk!

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