The international business environment is dynamic as well as demanding. For a growing client base and increasing sales and revenue, it is necessary for a business to gain an edge over its competitors. Offering multilingual customer support is one factor that helps in increasing both business outreach and profits.
However, setting up a multilingual call centre and recruiting multilingual agents are not enough to appease the international customer base. In order to build efficient multilingual customer support and to deliver great customer service, give equal attention to the following factors.
Determine the Support Level you are Capable to Provide
Supporting over a dozen languages at one point of time is a decision that does not reap fruitful results. Contrary to that, focus on three or four specific languages at one point of time, which business is capable to support both financially and technically.
Simultaneously, decide the medium of communication – email support, live chat support or voice-over translation. Existing customer base and target market are two parameters that help in determining to support which languages initially.
Lay Emphasis Upon Language Skills During Recruitment
In order to improve the multilingual support, it is necessary to hire experienced and native speakers, who are well-versed with more than one language of that specific country.
For instance, if a call centre is hiring agents for French call centre, make it a standard requirement to hire those candidates, who possess fluency in French, German or Spanish (second most common language in France) and English.
Retaining Agents by offering Competitive Packages
It is a well-known fact that call centres face the highest attrition rates. To combat such a situation, call centres should understand the importance of multilingual call agents and take relevant measures to maintain a high level of employee satisfaction. In order to sideline the attrition problem, offer competitive packages to multilingual agents at an initial level.
Invest in Training Process
After recruiting agents, it is important to train them on various business aspects like language tone, common business phrases, best customary practices to follow, etc.
Understanding and imbibing language tone and cross-cultural best practices are crucial to delivering great customer services to global customers. Training pertaining to cross-cultural practices encompasses guidelines for using simple and clear language while speaking to non-native speakers.
Setting Customer Expectations Upfront
Setting customers’ expectation upfront is utmost important to reduce the stress of unnecessary calls. Companies should remain crystal clear on what they do and what they do not.
This helps in preparing customers in advance and accordingly, they will ask queries from the agents. For this, companies should allow customers “to help themselves” by localizing website pages that include FAQ’s, supported documents and guidelines in their native languages.
