How to Provide Multilingual Customer Support

In the modern world of e-commerce and commercial trade, there are no longer any boundaries. If earlier buyers turned to companies that operate exclusively in their home country, because it was impossible to order goods from another country, now everything is possible. Buyers are ready to order goods from other countries in search of what they need. However, a big problem for businesses is that they cannot provide high-quality multilingual customer support.

Customer support is now the focus of successful companies because over 85% of customers are willing to pay more for goods and services if provided with a high level of customer service.

Twenty-three languages are native to more than four billion people on the planet. Each of them is spoken by over fifty million people. Companies that do not seek to move from local to global are losing huge potential.

If you’re interested in moving from local to global, you can’t go wrong with a high-quality business phone system that provides an international phone number, automatic call distribution, text messaging service for business, interactive voice response, and more.

We’ll walk you through the steps your company can take to start providing first-class multilingual customer support with high-quality call center software.

Steps Your Business Should Take 

Analyze visitors

In order not to start blindly trying to spend all your efforts on something that may not bear any fruit in the future, you need to figure out exactly which language groups you should target. To do this, you need to track the locations where the largest number of visitors come from.

This can be quickly done using the following helpful tools:

• Google Analytics;
• Adobe Analytics;
• Matomo;
• Clicky;
• Fathom.

By discovering where all the traffic to your website comes from, you can understand which languages are native to your customers, both potential and current.

Select languages for service

It is easy to think that most of the visitors are most comfortable talking to support specialists in English. However, in reality, many clients would be much more comfortable talking to specialists in their native language. Thus, you should check the volume of demand. For example, if there is a 15% difference in demand between English and German, and a 25-30% difference between German and Spanish, then you should focus on providing support in English and German.

Take advantage of outsourced customer support services

Time is money. Every company knows this firsthand. The speed with which you provide customer support has a big impact on how you sell and build strong customer relationships. Once you figure out where most of the visitors to your website come from, you’ll find that many of them may be from other countries. You can have different time zones and if your call center stops working when customers from other countries want to apply for support, then you will lose customers.

Many companies use outsourcing services for many tasks, in particular accounting, IT services, as well as customer support. There are many outsourced customer support services in the world with multilingual staff, low labor costs, and English language proficiency.

Among the top outsourced customer support companies are:

• Magellan Solutions, the Philippines;
• Infosys BPO;
• America’s Call Center, the USA;
• Ubiminds, Brazil;
• Belkins, Ukraine.

By choosing the best remote team, you will be able to ensure fast call processing speed as well as accuracy.

Offer customer support in multiple languages

By discovering where visitors come to your website from, you will decide in which languages you need to offer customer support. In this regard, you have 2 ways in which you can offer support:

• Recruitment of relevant personnel

You need people who can not only speak certain languages fluently but also be able to understand cultural differences. It plays a huge role in communicating with foreigners.

• Knowledge base

Not all buyers like to communicate with consultants. It is much more convenient for many people to find information themselves. That is why you can place a detailed knowledge base on your site with questions that are most often asked by buyers. In addition, make the knowledge base available in multiple languages.

Choose the right tools for customer service

Every company looking to thrive must invest in multi-channel customer support tools. We are talking about calls to the call center, chatting, using chatbots based on artificial intelligence, email support, and support on social platforms.

It will be difficult for companies that are just starting to provide all the channels to support customers. However, as the business develops, the main attention should be paid to the development of a customer support system. Thus, you can provide support to users in the most convenient way.

Localize website design as well as user interface

In addition to making changes to your call center, you also need to make changes to your website. Suppose your company’s website allows customers to get information about a product or service in one language. In that case, you will not see an increase in the number of customers who are ready to make a purchase.

Multilingualism offers customers and clients all the convenience and comfort for finding information and making a purchase. Take, for example, the international restaurant aggregator and food delivery service called Zomato. Tourists know about this service firsthand, because, using it, they can find cafes and restaurants located in twenty-four countries. Here, visitors can search for restaurants and cafes in their destinations, as well as view the menu, which is especially convenient.

Cafes and restaurants can upload information about their establishments, as well as list menus in eleven different languages. However, restaurants miss this opportunity and publish information only in their language. This is a big omission as many travelers prefer to make a list of cafes and restaurants they want to visit even before they arrive at their destination.

Conclusion 

Buyers in search of the ideal product or service are ready to turn to companies operating in other countries. However, the biggest stumbling block is the lack of multilingual customer support, which is why many companies lose a large number of customers. To move from local to global, companies need to analyze traffic, select languages to serve, build a knowledge base in various foreign languages, hire native speakers in the call center, use outsourced customer support services, modify the user interface, and invest in multi-channel support tools.