BASIC STEPS IN ESTABLISHING A MULTILINGUAL CUSTOMER SUPPORT STRATEGY
With the recent boom in interconnectedness and globalization in today’s world, customers must get served not just in one general language but also in their language of choice.
Customer support strategies of modern brands have it as a task to ensure that their customer service care is as multilingual as possible. For excellent customer support, communication is vital and mostly better in the customer’s language.
Equipping your brand with multilingual capabilities goes a long way in presenting your company positively to the public. It would also make the customer support experience unique for customers who feel cherished by communicating in their most comfortable language.
In setting up a multilingual customer support strategy, it is essential to put some factors into consideration. The following guidelines worthy of note will help you launch a successful and effective multilingual customer support strategy.
Pinpoint your Market
The first task here is to pinpoint your already existing markets and new ones. This crucial step will help guide you towards the language your customer support team ought to be able to speak.
Despite identifying the most spoken language within your market, it is also important to note the other languages spoken. It is quite evident in big metropolitan cities such as California. Despite having a majority of English speakers, it also has a large amount of Spanish (9.5 million), Chinese (927 000 ), and Filipino (707 000) speakers.
In establishing a customer support strategy, most companies and organizations pay attention to just one language. For example, a company establishing in an English language-dominated market setting up their customer support only in English. The decision often tends to be an error for companies operating in big cities with people from different multilingual backgrounds.
Forecast the type of customer inquiries
This step sometimes might sound a little bit difficult. In achieving this, there is a need for you to have a firm mastery of your markets. It is also vital that you monitor the rate of transactions you have with customers and note customers’ sections language-wise. This step would help identify the different languages needing support and the number of customer support staff required for each language.
It is also a plus to make sure you point out the minimum necessary skills customer service agents ought to possess for each language. These skillsets need to be based on your brand’s nature and the frequent issues your customers encounter daily. For example, it would be more beneficial for a tech company to hire a tech enthusiast as a customer support agent.
Another interesting issue to take into consideration is how your customers present queries’ their queries mostly diagnostic? Do they always seek advice from the company before making a purchase?
Your customer service agents must be equipped in all capacity and language-wise to deal with customer’s issues.
Acknowledge customer expectation
To successfully satisfy customers and improve on brand-customer relations, it is vital to pay attention to small but critical cultural details and aspects. In a multilingual market, there is a high probability of dealing with customers from different ethnicities.
It is necessary to pick up remarks made by customers to improve relations. There might be some words, pictures, etc., which customers consider unacceptable.
Another point is to take note of the different platforms to which your customers are most responsive to. Your brand ought to focus and invest in the media that customers prefer.
For example, if you have a market with millennials as the majority, it would be wise to invest in mobile solutions as a source of rendering customer service, as 50% of millennials would prefer phones to desktop computers. In contrast, older adults (born between 1946 and 1964) would select e-mail to other choices.
Lastly, when it concerns your multilingual call center’s availability, you need to gauge your market situation and then analyze it carefully. Assess the possibility of taking some days off or operate on a steady, 24/7 basis.
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