Ever since the boom of the Worldwide Web (WWW) — and even more so now that eCommerce has been becoming the new commercial sales standard — startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations have been increasingly breaking limitations to reach the world with their products and services; furthermore, consumers now practically have unlimited access to businesses / corporations for their sales needs. In a world with very little sales limitations, it is crucial for all businesses / corporations to provide multilingual remote customer care and tech support that reaches the world with its products / services.
Before the boom of the Worldwide Web (WWW), startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations were very limited in their sales opportunities and had to rely on door-to-door sales and local marketing ideas to reach local consumers with their products / services so that they could slowly build a customer base and gain a marginal revenue; while businesses / corporations generally had what it takes to gain a success that was comfortable during that timeframe, never would they have imagined back then the amount of success that they would be able to gain now with the amount of technology that we have available now-a-days. The advancement of the WWW and the standardization of e-Commerce — the new standard in commercial sales — has been significantly providing more-and-more each year unlimited opportunities to businesses / corporations to take the world by storm with their products and services; consumers now have full access to products and services from anywhere in the world, at any time, and at any magnitude.
Thinking on the commercial sales freedom that startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations have due to the remote accessibility that current internet technology provides to consumers, it is easy to remember one famous line from the Spider-Man series of comic books which was popularized by Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben in the series’ movies:
“With great power comes a great responsibility.”
Since businesses and corporations have the world at their footsteps — and since consumers from all over the world have unlimited access to their products / services — commercial sellers — especially eCommerce sellers (i.e. Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Lazada, Shopee, Online Stores, etcetera) — have a great responsibility to maximize on this great sales power by providing their current and prospective consumers exceptional remote customer care and tech support that traverses communicational boundaries and that meets consumers where they’re at; consumers are now utilizing omnichannel communication and Telecom platforms (i.e. phone calls, SMS messaging, e-mail, live chat, websites, and social media) to connect with commercial sellers — and, this means that a gap that once was is being successfully bridged between product and / or service providers and consumers. Multilingual remote customer service and technical support is becoming a dire necessity in today’s day and age — and, any business / corporation that utilizes such multilingual support is destined to find a competitive edge in the global market and grand success.
In consideration that strong B2C relationships — even B2B relationships — are becoming more easily accessible globally, it is extremely important for businesses and corporations to remember that both customer service and consumers are important for sales success and for financial growth. Practically-speaking, the match is made in heaven; on the one hand, customer service is the face of every business and corporation due to the fact that customer service representatives are the first, last, and in-between interaction that consumers with the businesses and corporations that they purchase their products / services from — and, on the other hand, consumers — more specifically, loyal consumers — are the principal catalysts that bring strong short-term and steady long-term financial growth to businesses and corporations. There is in fact no better way to cultivate this relationship than to provide for consumers a customer service and technical support team that is multilingual. Multilingual customer service support provides a whole slew of benefits — most of which can be seen below (non-extensive):
- A Strengthening in Global Market Positioning
The addition of multilingual customer service and tech support provides businesses and corporations a grand advantage in global market positioning because it allows businesses / corporations to more effectively and efficiently work within the confines of their current consumers’ and future prospects’ demographics; it is easier for multilingual-capable businesses and corporations to expand service areas and increase market shares by providing sales, customer care, and tech support in the languages that consumers natively speak. - The Easy Facilitation of Customer Communication
By providing multilingual customer care and tech support, consumers all over the world have access to pre-sales and post-sales solutions in their own native languages which boosts the quality and efficiency of the customer service that businesses and corporations provide; whenever solutions are provided in the native languages that consumers speak, consumers will feel heard, understood, and valued by their commercial product / service providers, and miscommunication and misinterpretation of information can be minimized which decreases the average time that consumers are in queue, decreases average handle time, and also increases the first call resolution quality. - A Stronger Competitive Advantage in the Global Market
Apart from the fact that businesses / corporations that provide multilingual customer service will more than likely gain an edge in the global market versus competitors who do not provide such services, it has been proven that multilingual support also increases sales; consumers who receive multilingual support are more easily disposed to pay a higher price for products / services. - The Minimization of the Severity of Product or Service Issues
When it comes to customer service issues, there is nothing more debilitating for consumers than to have delays in the reception of their service; multilingual customer care and tech support is a crutch in the debilitation caused by such delays because the provision of customer care solutions in consumers’ native languages is proven to minimize delays and to improve tolerance of customer service issues in general — in fact, it has been proven that approximately 58 percent of all consumers are willing to wait longer for customer care support access in their own language — and, even up to 62 percent are more than likely to tolerate product / service issues if they are promised to receive support in their native tongues. - The Improvement of Products and Services
Businesses / corporations that plan on expanding their operations beyond borders can truly gain quite an edge over the competition in the global market when they are ready to utilize multilingual capabilities. We are now speaking in general — not just when it comes to customer service; having information — such as product specifications, user manuals and knowledge bases — ready for consumers regardless of their location and regardless of what language or languages they speak ensures that consumers receive clear instructions on how to make the best of their products or services and also minimizes customer service tickets — as well as ensures that consumers know how to properly use, assemble, and take care of the products / services. - An Increase in Customer Loyalty
Naturally-speaking, consumers want to feel valued; providing multilingual customer service support facilitates and increases the possibility that consumers will feel such intrinsic value whenever they are allowed to let out their concerns in their own native languages and also are able to receive solutions in the same manner — turning those consumers into repeat and / or long-term customers which increases customer satisfaction, customer retention, and brand loyalty. - An Increase in Sales
The provision of multilingual customer care and technical support in consumers’ languages doesn’t just increase loyalty — but, it may actually steal consumers from competitors that don’t provide multilingual support; it has been proven that up to 35 percent of consumers actually prefer to switch over to products / services that are available in native languages — which especially improves conversion rates in places where consumers cannot speak English fluently.
Startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations should absolutely consider including multilingual servicing in their sales plans as the benefits that such services provide is priceless; any business or corporation with multilingual capabilities in their repertoire can take the global market by the horns and run with it. Not only are they able to surpass their competitors in customer acquisition and retention, but businesses / corporations can also secure a future of steady financial growth and long-term success.
For such businesses and corporations that are considering adding multilingual capabilities to their sales and customer service plans, there are a few actions that they can start implementing to get started:
- Utilize an Outsourced Contact Center
Outsourced contact centers — like our very own Callnovo Contact Center which has been providing superb multilingual customer service and technical support to more than 1,000 B2B and B2C partners for more than 16 years — are one of the best means of providing multilingual customer service support since they are already technologically-ready and also already have customer care and technical support teams that are fluent in a multitude of languages and can reach consumers without any time-constraints, at any location throughout the world, and at a significant fraction of the cost that it would take for businesses / corporations to provide multilingual services in-house. Our very own Callnovo Contact Center actually provides some of the best business advantages in the world — which you may see below:- Around the Clock Customer Service Support — Without Locational Limits — We have strategically-placed offices in more than six countries and in more than ten sites throughout the world; our entire staff not only dynamically provides effective and efficient remote customer care solutions in over 35 languages worldwide (such as: English, Spanish, Mandarin / Cantonese, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, German, Turkish, Arabic, Portuguese, etcetera) — but, our staff handles overall throughout the entire range of our services more than 1,000 clients. We are thankful for our worldwide coverage because it allows us the opportunity to provide superb customer service support at any time during the day — regardless of the time zone; all clients can feel content and at peace to know that we have highly-skilled offshore and offsite professionals that are available to provide the key solutions that consumers need for all of their pre-sales / post-sales necessities — whenever they need them — since providing a highly satisfactory customer service experience is our upmost priority.
- Complete Customer Care Support — We offer a complete customer service support package that provides telephone-based, SMS-messaging-based, email-based, live-chat-based, web-based, and social-media-based customer care support that has global coverage and is multilingual capable — and, our client success manager is 100% committed to taking care of all global multilingual customer service responsibilities during each detail of the entire process of outsourced operations — including: the obtaining of client toll-free 1–800 numbers, the designing and recording of professional interactive voice responses (IVRs), the configuration of all telephone systems and CRM settings, the recruitment, interview, testing, and training of all customer service representatives (CSRs), quality assurance, communications, follow-ups, operation feedback, the organization of meetings, recording and monitoring — and so much more. In addition to the above, Callnovo Contact Center’s information technology (IT) team uses leading cloud communication and CRM platforms to cater to clients’ specific requirements; likewise, the IT team handles ticket management, phone recordings, SMS messaging, and social media, as well as advanced reporting and other functions in one perfectly integrated platform.
- State-of-the-Art Customer Care Tools — We use the most advanced technology to ensure that each one of our CSRs can effectively and efficiently provide the quickest and most consumer-convenient solutions for every and all issues that consumers may have; the benefit of this is that our current and prospective clients do not need to invest in us since we already have the necessary resources to necessary resources to help clients in their various customer service and technical support needs. By investing in our clients first, we can ensure that no client should have to pay high-cost software license fees, giving them the advantage and privilege of freely enjoying all the advanced features of modern cloud-based call center technology without any extra cost. One of the platforms that we use is our own, internally-developed Global Cloud-based SaaS CRM and Communications platform — the most up-to-date standard in client-consumer relations. CRM is the fastest growing and most widely used system available and prides itself in giving customer care agents a complete overview of every consumer during the entire life-cycle of their interactions with each customer service agent; customer care professionals can collaborate with each other in multiple-CSR accounts as well as with their clients’ staff. In addition to this, customer care professionals can see each business’, corporation’s, and consumer’s history, the status of each issue, each business’, corporation’s, and consumer’s social media activity (if applicable), campaign and lead information (if applicable), and so much more. The system is so beneficial that it can move businesses and corporations forward in shifting them from just being productive to being inherently consumer-centered; this not only ensures that needs are met — but also ensures that there is active business growth. Furthermore, one of the best perks that the system provides is the ability to manage issues across the different Telecom and communication channels without losing track of any issues; being able to connect many functions and those that utilize them on one platform is pricelessly valuable for delivering vitally important customer service experiences in a connected way.
- The Utmost Integrity — As an ISO 9001-certified outsourced customer service and technical support contact center, we uphold the highest quality of integrity when it comes to client-based solutions, proving that our clients can confide in us completely. For clients, we offer the security of a perfect collaboration experience with a personal touch to our services by emphasizing excellent results, promoting the highest ethics in our many services, as well as by maintaining transparency in our operations and communication — all to the end that our clients can be assured of how extremely important they are to us. On the consumer side of things, we utilize quality control specialists who analyze CSR-consumer interactions in such a way that they can ensure that very high-level language skills are used and that proper customer care is provided. Quality control specialists conduct at least two checks per week per agent to see how each CSR is doing with their customers; if needed, soft-skill training is provided — as well as recommendations on how CSRs can improve their communication. In addition to this, quality control specialists are assigned to any CSR that experiences difficulties in speaking or understanding a language to ensure that they can improve their language skills.
- Money and Resource Savings — by utilizing an outsourced contact center such as our very own Callnovo Contact Center for customer care support outsourcing needs, eCommerce clients are able to save money and resources the following way (non-extensive): (1) they are able to save on the costs that they would pay for hiring onboard client service staff, (2) they are able to save the time needed to develop and complete projects by allowing more efficient and effective offshore and offsite professionals to take over these projects at a fraction of the cost, (3) they are able to save costs on infrastructure development by allowing professionals offshore and offsite professionals to make the necessary infrastructural changes at a fraction of the cost that industries would spend to do such work onsite, and (4) they are able to save on in-house training and recruitment costs since offshore and offsite partners already have the right professionals needed to take care of all the outsourcing business’ / corporations’ needs.
- Invest in Translation Tools
Businesses / corporations that have trouble hiring native speakers or have trouble finding qualified native speakers may also consider investing in advanced translation platforms that can do any translation work for them; the benefit to such tools is that they eliminate any unnecessary groundwork that would be done by customer service professionals and also allows customer service activities to be completed more effectively and efficiently. - Utilize Chatbots
By utilizing chatbots, businesses and corporations can lighten up their customer care support teams’ loads by handling common questions and simple issues — and, in consumers’ preferred languages as well — since chatbots are able to show the right message to the right customer based on a client’s location or browser language; chatbots can then diagnose all concerns and also transfer them to the right support team.
In conclusion, it is extremely important for businesses and corporations to consider adding multilingual capabilities to their sales repertoire because it not only benefits their long-term sales success — but, it also benefits consumers as well because they will feel valued and will also feel that the customer service experiences that they receive are worth it. The end benefit to such service from a consumer’s point of view is that they will place a high value on the products / services that they purchase based on their whole sales experience and will then feel that that value justifies the prices that they pay — which in-turn turns consumers into loyal long-term customers.