Picture this – you are trying to track a lost purchase in the mail. None of the self-service options available are in the Language you speak. The agent you finally get to speak to doesn’t understand you. Frustrating isn’t it?

Consider your customer in the same situation and multiply that by the number of target customers in your non-English speaking markets. What do you think the number looks like? Recent surveys reveal customer Support centres receiving over 60% calls from non-native speakers. With plenty of such customer queries pouring in, you cannot afford to ignore this segment of your customer base. Else, your customer experience and loyalty is likely to suffer a pretty big dent and subsequently your revenue.

Most companies do see the importance of customer experience, however their non-English speaking customers often get overlooked. This could be due to a lack of resources speaking the local language, limited budget for additional language support, or the inability to manage multiple languages on the helpdesk. How do you manage engagement, personalization, agent effort, and loyalty for non-native speaking customers?

Customer Service for Customers Who Do Not Speak a Language You Formally Support

Most often when a non-English speaking customer contacts the support team, the support agent feels helpless and apologizes to the customer or turns to translation services like Google Translator. Truth be told, these are failed attempts at creating great experiences for non-English speakers.

Customers are more comfortable interacting with a business in the language they speak. In case of an issue or a critical need, it isn’t practical that the agent go looking for someone who speaks the language. Businesses today see the ability to offer support in a customer’s native language as a competitive differentiator. Industries such as healthcare and government agencies which provide service for foreign customers thrive on multilingual support. Ecommerce businesses are able to gain customer trust if they can converse in the customer’s own language.

Here’s why you should consider multilingual customer support too.

• Provide better customer experience
• Achieve higher customer satisfaction
• Scale global customer base
• Gain competitive advantage
• Deliver higher agent satisfaction
• Ensure better agent productivity

The Multilingual Customer Support Strategy

If you are a business with customers in international markets or are looking to expand into these markets, here are a few points to consider when implementing multilingual support:

• Identify current and target markets involving languages you currently don’t support
• Evaluate volume and scope of these customer inquiries
• Identify customer expectations and map them to the existing customer service model
• Leverage technology to deliver on business goals and expectations
• Track and measure engagement, personalization, customer experience and effort spent.

To find out more about the impact of language on customer experience and the success of a brand, sign up for an exclusive webinar on 23 October 2018 at 2pm BST and 3pm CEST. If you cannot make it to the webinar, register anyway and we’ll send a recording of the session to your mailbox.

Save your seat now!

The post Webinar: Multilingual Customer Service — A Competitive Differentiator appeared first on Freshdesk Blogs.