In order to stand out among a multitude of competitors and seize the market opportunity, the well-known 40-year-old Los Angeles all-inclusive service travel wholesalers – APF Travel’s brand Golatin (hereinafter referred to as Golatin) and the Callnovo multilingual call centre – have reached an agreement on the outsourcing of pre-sales and after-sales customer service of projects in the Chinese travel market in March 2018.
As soon as the project is initiated, Callnovo Call Centre will immediately assist clients to successfully apply for, and set up, the China 400 toll-free telephone number; thereby opening the door for customer service in China’s local market for Golatin. With this cooperation, Callnovo Call Centre provides the services of fluent Chinese, Cantonese and English customer service personnel.
The service is provided in the form of telephone answering, call back and email handling. On behalf of Golatin, it provides a more thoughtful, fast and user-friendly customer service for Chinese tourists from North America and China who are travelling to South America. In just two months, Callnovo Call Centre has effectively improved the travel experience of Golatin’s global Chinese travellers and achieved gratifying results through professional Chinese, Cantonese and English pre-sales and after-sales services. Recently, due to the significant increase in business volume, the customer service team has recruited a number of trilingual customer service personnel.
For a service-intense industry like tourism, the introduction of an experienced third-party customer service call centre and its professional resources (for overseas Chinese merchants who are not familiar with the Chinese market) is a fast and cost-effective solution for multinational enterprises to efficiently “dig gold” in the Chinese market. This is because a professional customer service call centre fulfils the following needs:
1.Resourcefulness: The provision of localized services to ensure that overseas Chinese companies are able to enter the Chinese market smoothly.
According to the “New Trends in China’s Consumption: 3 major driving forces shaping China’s new consumer base” report, jointly published by the Ali Research Institute and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG): “China’s upper middle-class consumers, new era consumers and online shopping are the three major forces that are leading the change in China’s consumer trend.” Compared with traditional consumer groups, China’s new consumer groups prefer customized and personalized products and services; the demand for consumption and experience is becoming more and more orientated to high-end sophistication.
Some overseas Chinese merchants who are not familiar with China’s market are easily affected by domestic price wars; they use a simple net-casting low-price marketing method, which is like “giving roses to a beggar and giving bread to a princess”. They are unable to understand and cater to the consumption needs of different customers. As a result, it is difficult for companies to enter the Chinese market smoothly. Eventually this will lead to them ceasing to trade.
In order to successfully enter the Chinese market, overseas Chinese multinational corporations must ensure that they localize their products and services, in order to fully understand the needs of China’s consumers. The introduction of the professional outsourcing service of the Chinese, Cantonese and English native-level customer service call centre, is one of the best solutions to enable overseas business to conduct localization. It is very difficult to hire fluent trilingual business representatives in the United States. They are either not fluent in Chinese, or their English is not up to standard. Some of them are fluent in all three languages, but they have been away from China for too long, leading to cultural differences when communicating with Chinese customers (not to mention their willingness to work the night shift to serve the Chinese market on a long-term basis).
Callnovo Call Centre has a large number of trilingual Chinese localization talent resources, as well as a rich operational experience. Varied talent resources and wide operational experience are able to help overseas businesses to enter and develop in different aspects of the Chinese market. For example, the talents of telemarketing, WeChat Weibo marketing, inbound sales, pre-sales and after-sales services etc. are readily available.
Callnovo multilingual call centre has a wealth of experience and technical capability; it has been committed to helping overseas merchants, in terms of Chinese customer service localization, for more than ten years. As well as tourism, it has effectively expanded and maintained the Chinese market for all kinds of overseas Chinese companies from different industries in recent years, including real estate, consumer electronics, games, apparel, communications, IT and so on.
2.Speed: it can become operational in as little as 10 days
It is not impossible for a company to build an internal multilingual call centre and operate it using its own internal IT and management team, but the time period consumed will be much longer. From planning functions to purchasing servers, software, hardware, debugging, and personnel recruitment, it usually takes 2-3 months at the earliest. If outsourced to a professional call centre, the time period can be greatly reduced. Callnovo Call Centre can begin operating for clients in as little as 10 days. In addition, during special periods of business, companies may need to customize some system functions quickly, conduct special technical arrangements, or add some old or new languages. All the above can be quickly achieved through a professional call centre. Don’t forget, as well as a high level of efficiency in both initiation and operation, professional call centres can also quickly handle project termination. Normally, Callnovo Call Centre only requires 30 days’ advance notice from the customer. If companies hired formal employees, it would involve many considerations such as personnel, labour law, severance payment, etc. All this slows down the entire process and leads to delay wastage.
3.Excellence: it ensures customer satisfaction with a high level of customer service
Companies can plan carefully and set up their own call centre team. However, the most common pit is that “the businesses do not know that they do not know”. The company’s internal team may not be knowledgeable about new technologies, new trends, new methods and new resources in the call centre industry, and it may miss the opportunity for the call centre to save costs and increase value; this kind of “lost” is usually hidden for a long time. Professional customer service call centres usually have a rich experience in pre-sales marketing, after-sales service and technical support in various industries. After call centre representatives receive training regarding the client’s products and services, they are able to quickly adapt to the corresponding customer service skills and techniques. Furthermore, experienced call centre customer service representatives not only have the ability to quickly and calmly respond to common customer requirements and problems, but are also able to look for business opportunities during the customer communication process and proactively explore customer potential. Other than that, for small and medium-sized overseas Chinese companies, it is especially vital that the call centre helps them to improve their services through WeChat, Weibo and proactive telephone call back. This can help overseas Chinese companies to retain their old customers, reduce customer attrition rate and expand a new customer base.
4. Cost-effectiveness: it can reduce costs
For overseas brands or companies that have just chosen China as their target market, setting up their own call centres will not only increase operating costs, but also lengthen the cost recovery period. Office space leasing, purchase of equipment and maintenance, recruitment of multilingual customer service call representatives and inevitable employee turnover, as well as the company’s future ongoing operating costs, are all significant expenses. Moreover, it takes a lot of time, effort and cost for a company to train qualified customer service representatives and back-end technical support staff. In addition, time zone differences must also be taken into consideration. Expensive customer service representatives in Europe and the United States need to be employed to work the night shift to maintain China’s cross-border tourism market on a long-term basis. This can result in extremely low staff satisfaction and a high turnover rate, which inevitably increases investment costs and operational difficulties.
From the cost perspective, it is wise for Golatin to opt for an outsourced call centre. Compared with setting up a local trilingual call centre in both Europe and America, choosing Callnovo Call Centre will save at least 50% of the initial investment cost and 60% of the long-term operating cost.
Under the favourable circumstances of China’s new strategies and policies, it is advisable for overseas Chinese merchants who want to seize the opportunity of China’s golden market, to look for a mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation with a professional global multilingual call centre. This will help them to become a new beneficiary of China’s economic globalization.