As per the global multilingual customer survey, 68 percent of the customers prefer speaking with brands in their native language. Therefore, while planning on delivering a consistent CX to boost customer loyalty and satisfaction, offering multilingual customer support could be a bonus!
Why? Because when customers receive support in their native language, they are more likely to return. It gives them feelings of confidence, empathy, and incentive to buy from your brand, which is a win for your business!
Importance of Multilingual Customer Support
While penetrating international markets, expecting your new customers to speak one common language can marginalize the customer reach. This can even cause your brand to fall behind the competition.
English might be the popular language online, but it only represents 25.9 percent of internet users worldwide. Besides this, 22 percent of the US population does not speak English in their homes. With that being said, ignoring multilingual support can lead to major consequences especially if you are a business/brand that plans to scale globally.
Offer Exceptional Multilingual Customer Experience and Support
Not sure where to begin when it comes to offering multilingual support? Consider these tips:
1: Know the Language of Your Target Market
The very first thing inbound or outbound contact centers must consider while offering multilingual support is to understand the native language of the target audience.
To learn which language your target audience speaks, take a closer look at customer data. This includes customer demographics, IP addresses, email addresses, and contact information that gives a clear picture of the language they speak. Then, plan from there.
2: Use Simple Sentences
Simpler words and easier sentences can make multilingual customer support highly effective. The best practice is to drill down to the most basic subject + verb + object phrase when communicating with the customer.
Using colloquialisms and acronyms is not a good idea. Plugging into idioms in the message can make it confusing and complicated. It’s best to choose short, simple, and clear sentences to convey the message. Otherwise, you could run into the risk of miscommunicating. Even if this makes the message boring, don’t fret. Keep the focus on getting the point across.
3: Be Culturally Sensitive
It’s highly important to understand the cultural differences when offering multilingual customer support. Here localization comes into play. Some things that your customer support team should consider while extending support include:
- The time difference in the countries where your customers are based in
- Important calendar holidays
- Social etiquettes
Switching between customer calls demands changing the tone of your voice to address unique customer needs and solve their individual problems. While doing that, your support team wouldn’t want to come across as totally clueless about their culture. Therefore, always be culturally apt when speaking to a customer.
4: Customize the Campaign
In order to create a positive brand image, whether you are an IT support company or any other business, you must customize your brand for multicultural campaigns. This job isn’t as simple as translating the content of the campaign into the languages spoken by your target audience. Instead, your brand must speak to the customer and connect with them on a personal level.
Consider the demographics of the target audience such as their income, religion, education, and gender, and create stories that resonate with them on a personal level. Localize the tone as well as the language while connecting with them.
5: Provide Online Self-Help Tools
Customers prefer using online self-help tools if the knowledge base on the website is customized according to their needs. They expect customization and multi-language support from this knowledge base too. No customer likes explaining their problem to multiple agents over the phone or staying on hold for hours. It’s always convenient to dig into the knowledge base or self-help tools to find the answer to their problem.
Having a multilingual knowledge base in place can go a long way in boosting customer satisfaction and reducing the cost of hiring multiple agents as you consider opting for outsourcing solutions for your business.
Conclusion
With the right tools and the right approach, it’s possible to successfully eliminate language barriers standing in the way of delivering an awesome multilingual customer experience. Do equip your team with cultural understanding, market research, and some competitor research.
If customer support is not your business’s core competency, you can always outsource call center and business IT solutions to deliver unmatched multilingual support, handle customer inquiries and offer a satisfactory experience.
Frequently Ask Questions
Have a look at some frequently asked questions related to multilingual and bilingual support.
What is multilingual?
Multilingual is the ability to effectively speak or communicate in three or more languages.
What is the difference between bilingual and multilingual?
Bilingual is the ability to speak two languages fluently whereas multilingual is the ability to speak three or more languages fluently.
Why multilingual support is important?
Ans: Multilingual support helps a business in positioning itself to attract specific market segments, build a stronger and better emotional connection with the customer, and improve overall customer satisfaction.