Many businesses see multilingual call centers as a valuable add-on. Yet, not every business is a giant and simply doesn’t have the staff or the resources to get a multilingual call center set up and operational at a high standard. The main goal and benefit of running a customer call center is to enhance customer loyalty. Furthermore, any problems customers experience gets resolved quickly and this massively improves customer satisfaction with the services or products you offer. In order to ensure long-term success, companies must keep their clients happy. In fact, it is seven times more expensive to look for a new customer than it is to keep your current clientele happy.
In addition, your happiest customers will become mini-marketing gurus for your company–free of charge. They will rave about your customer service to all their friends, family, and acquaintances. You just can’t put a price on this kind of advertising. These days, in the face of impersonal corporations staging take-overs on a global scale, small businesses can get an edge over their corporate competition when they deliver excellent customer service to a global audience.
We now live in a truly connected world where businesses can expect to attract a bevy of customers from all around the globe. To nurture growth in the current business climate, you must open doors for clients who might not speak in your native tongue. But, how? Setting up and establishing a high-quality multilingual call center alone is no mean feat. When small to medium businesses try to provide an in-house multilingual call center, they will face many challenges along the way.
Why do you need a multilingual call center anyway? Won’t English do?
Every marketplace is becoming more diverse
If you just focus on the U.S. marketplace alone, you can see a surge in both the Hispanic and Asian population. There are around 400 million speakers worldwide. Furthermore, one in six people speak Mandarin. If your business can quickly service customers from a multilingual perspective, imagine how many more customers you can reach?
In the world today, over 7000 languages are spoken and while English remains the most widely spoken language this doesn’t mean everyone who might love your services or product speaks enough English to navigate your English-speaking call-center. There are millions of potential customers who don’t speak English. By setting up a multilingual call center you can extend your reach into new markets.
Globalization is on the rise
The one thing the Internet did for the world is to connect us all–including businesses. Moreover, an increasing number of companies are ditching the brick-and-mortar model in favor of eCommerce. With an eCommerce store, you can reach millions of potential customers 24/7. But these customers will have questions and concerns–and many of them won’t speak English. As a result, it is necessary for businesses to offer a 24/7 multilingual customer support service.
However, setting up an in-house multilingual call center presents a number of significant challenges.
Four challenges of in-house multilingual call centers:
#1 How many people on your current team are bilingual?
For starters, unless you have personally mastered multiple languages you will not easily be able to check scripts and customer service language to make sure your brand is being communicated to your customers in the way you want. Often, implications and meanings get lost in translation. Your product and services deserve more than a rough “Google translate” approach. Without knowing multiple languages, yourself, you have no way to check and understand how your marketing materials, or customer service scripts are coming across in another language.
This kind of insight needs professionals who can understand the concepts you are applying in your own language and can then communicate this well in the new languages you want to offer at your multilingual call center.
#2 Different cultures have different expectations
When it comes to customer service, different cultures have different expectations. Even when you consider America and Europe the differences can be significant. Americans are used to a very chatty, friendly and engaged customer service. While Europeans prefer a subtler approach and often feel the American approach is annoying and over the top.
On the other hand, Americans might not feel cared for when they experience European customer service. This is without even considering other cultures with more significant differences who communicate using a language other than English.
When you plan how you want to communicate with different customers having staff who appreciate the subtleties (or sometimes not so subtle) differences between cultures can make the difference between success and failure. Trying to achieve this in-house is more than difficult.
You could argue it is almost impossible. When you use an experienced outsourced call-center they have experience with all these challenges and they can focus on resolving them, while you get on with what you do best.
#3 Multilingual call centers mean multicultural staff rosters
Onboarding, training, and embracing into your company a new team of multicultural staff members involves a lot of challenges. This means you need to provide training to ensure consistency for your brand when you don’t have experience trying to get a team set up presents a significant mountain of a challenge. Outsourcing the call center means you can skip the learning curve and use a company whose specialty is providing multilingual customer service and they have already made all the mistakes, learned from them and perfected what they do. You don’t have to climb this mountain alone when other people have already done all the climbing and can help you!
#4 High costs to set up an in-house multilingual call center
Opening and launching a multilingual call center in-house comes rife with high costs from land payments to infrastructure to rent to property taxes, and this is all before the costs come in for hiring, education, onboarding, supplies, software, and ongoing training.
The solution:
Outsource your multilingual call center and get reputable experts
When you outsource your multilingual call center, you won’t have to worry about the high costs of setting up an in-house multilingual customer support service. Everything will be taken care of, so you can spend more time on mission-critical activities such as growing your global business.
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, stick with the tried and true. An established multilingual call center will already have high-quality support staff in place to both meet and exceed all your expectations. They already have the expertise and experience from managing other, similar business clients.
Their agents are trained on a consistent basis to ensure they are on top of all your company’s latest policies and procedures when dealing with your customers. They will also use the latest call routing technologies to guarantee your customers are answered by a live and friendly agent as soon as possible.
Not to mention, when you outsource your multilingual call center, you can scale up or down as needed. For instance, if the winter holidays are your busiest selling season, then you might ask for a package that offers more agents on a seasonal basis.
Since an established multilingual call center understands the importance of the winter shopping season, they will already have staff trained and ready to go when needed. Think of how delighted your customers will be when they know you have assistance ready for them in their native language.
Boost your global reputation
In the modern marketplace, social good is just as important as your products and services. There is a lot of attention being paid to companies who have proven they are culturally sensitive. In a consumer-driven world, your job is to please your customer and to provide relevant products and services. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is by offering a multilingual call center.
As a result, you can show your current and future customers that your company is sensitive to their diverse needs. Plus, you communicate to your customers that you want to provide easy access to them where ever they are.
The, your reputation improves because you have call center representatives able to communicate clearly and effectively with customers who speak different languages.
Final thoughts
There was a time when language was a barrier to commerce. Not anymore. When you offer and outsource a multilingual call center, you tap into multiple new markets. You convey your cultural sensitivity to your customers and provide the type of customer service that can only be described as “world class.” Many of the world’s biggest companies such as Capital One, Hewlett Packard, and T-MOBILE outsource their multilingual calls centers–you should too.
