The Importance of Effective Multilingual Language Skills for Customer Support

In an increasingly globalized world, it's vital that companies can support their customers adequately wherever they are and, in any language, they may speak. This post will explore the importance of effective multilingual customer support and explain how to provide excellent service in multiple languages. 

Multilingual Customer Support: Why Your Company Needs it? 

Providing customers with a support representative who speaks their native language massively improves their experience. It allows them to communicate efficiently and helps them feel more comfortable while eliminating the potential frustration of language barriers. Providing multilingual customer support can help you build a good reputation in diverse communities. Let's look at some of the key reasons your company needs multilingual customer support. 

Customers are Loyal to Companies with Native Language Customer Support

According to a recent research by Intercom, which surveyed both SaaS customers and support team leads, 29% of businesses have lost customers because they don't offer multilingual support. From the customer perspective, 70% of end-users surveyed said they felt more loyal to companies that provide support in their native language. This demonstrates that multilingual customer support is a significant factor in retaining customers and should be a key priority for businesses. 

Multilanguage Support Can Overcome Other Product Weaknesses

A great product alone will not compensate for weaknesses in customer support. However, where there are weaknesses in a product – which is the case for most – providing excellent customer support can increase tolerance of issues amongst customers. 

Research has found that customers are more likely to tolerate issues with a product if they can interact with customer support in their native language. Language barriers heighten customers' frustrations when they reach the point of contact with customer support. Eliminating this issue helps de-escalate tensions and ensure adequate solutions are reached sooner. 

Few Companies Offer Customer Support in Various Languages

While many companies theoretically offer customer support in multiple languages, end users cannot often access support in their native language. Multilingual support, therefore, allows you to differentiate your business and stand out from competitors. According to the Intercom survey, 35% of end-users stated that they would be willing to switch products to deal with a company offering support in their native language. 

How to offer excellent multilingual customer support

If your company targets global customers, you must have a strategy to provide support in your customers' preferred language. Doing this well will allow you to attract and retain more customers. 

Identify key markets

Knowing your markets and customers well is essential if you want to meet their needs adequately. While it may not be practical for you to translate everything, begin by identifying high priority markets and start there. Look at the regions you are operating in and determine which languages you need to support. It's a good idea to initially prioritize those with a high ROI potential. 

Localize your help center 

Today's customers are more willing than ever to help themselves, so be sure to provide them with quality resources to enable this. Make sure your help center documentation is available in multiple languages so customers can attempt to resolve their issues before making contact. This will help you streamline your support team and put resources into resolving more technical matters. 

Provide your support team with translation tools

It is not practical to hire dedicated native speakers for every market you operate in. Translation tools can empower support representatives to effectively communicate with customers in their preferred language. Examples of translation tools include Deepl, Lokalise and Google Translate. While these apps may not be failproof, they are excellent tools for those offering text-based customer support such as web chat services. 

Use chatbots to streamline services

Using AI applications like chatbots can help you to streamline your support. Such apps can triage customer questions in multiple languages, asking clarifying questions to adequately direct the customer to the appropriate team. Often, this allows for support or relevant information to be provided in the appropriate language without the need for human interaction. 

Hire multilingual support reps

Hiring multilingual support reps allows you to provide customer service for various languages. Identify the key markets and languages spoken and begin there. Use tools that help you assess language competencies at the hiring stage to ensure the best possible candidates. Pipplet's online solution lets you evaluate a candidate's oral and written language skills using professional scenarios. When it comes to excellent service, nothing beats the ability to have natural conversations in your native language with a human being. 

What Industries Offer Multilingual Customer Support?

As the world becomes more globalized, many industries are finding a need for multilingual customer support. Where companies operate on a global level, they must consider all their avenues of communication and ensure these are adapted to customers speaking many different languages. This includes website information, product documentation, web chat, email, video, and phone support. The following industries are perhaps leaders in this area. 

Digital services and Consumer electronics

Companies offering SaaS applications, hardware products, electronics, and software increasingly provide multilingual customer support since their products and services are often used globally. Being able to provide adequate technical support is crucial in this industry. Therefore, it is essential that customers communicate with representatives in their preferred language to resolve any issues they may face. Being unable to access the appropriate technical support can often render a product or service useless to end users in this industry. 

Gaming

The global nature of the gaming market requires companies within it to be multilingual at their core. Whether it be support for partners, developers, distributors, retailers, or end-users, technical, product, supply chain and player support are essential. Operators in this space often have support teams for specific global territories and require customer service representatives with multilingual skills.

E-commerce

Providing multilingual customer support can help a retailer open up to the international market and significantly increase sales. Online retailers need to provide multilingual customer support on various platforms, including web chat, email, and phone. Retail customers must access product information in their preferred language prior to sale, receive product documentation and correspondence in their language once a purchase has been made, and access after-sales support in the appropriate language. 

Medical and healthcare 

It is a legal requirement for medical and healthcare organizations to provide multilingual support to their patients in some countries. As such, this is an industry that prioritizes this. Where it is not a matter of compliance, it is still a pressing concern that patients can communicate in their native language. The most crucial benefit is reducing misunderstandings, which can lead to serious consequences. 

Travel and hospitality

This is amongst the most obvious example of where global interactions occur. The hospitality and travel industry have constant communication with customers and guests, including voice calls, emails, and web interactions. Having multilingual customer support improves the guest experience and can help to increase bookings while reducing cancellations. 

In an increasingly globalized world, providing multilingual customer support will give you the edge over competitors, helping you attract and retain more customers. 

How Pipplet can help

Pipplet is a world-class language assessment solution, that will help your recruiters save precious time and hire the best candidates! Pipplet advises on how to assemble a team of proficient multilingual customer support representatives. This will help your customers find their way and make your company competitive in the global market. 

Using the strategies outlined in this post, you can begin to offer outstanding multilingual customer support. Whatever industry you're in, if you operate in multiple markets, it's worth considering how multilingual support can benefit your customers and business.

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