Written by: Ethan Rome
Excellent customer support is a tool that helps keep your customers and attract new ones to your business. Most customers can pay top dollar just to get a good customer experience. Others can even be more tolerant with some issues such as delays or problems with the product if they receive great customer support.
As businesses go global and the customer base becomes multilingual, providing multilingual support becomes necessary. Most people value finding help in a language that they can understand. Just adding multilingual support in your business can boost customer satisfaction and experience significantly. Here are five ways that you can use translation to provide multilingual customer support to enhance customer experience.
Make your website multilingual
Your website is likely the first place your clients go when they need to interact with your business. For this reason, you want every visitor to be able to browse your website in a language that he or she can understand. And, that is where website translation comes into play. Start by determining the languages that your customers speak. In addition, work with a reliable translation services provider. For instance, if you are in Houston, going through Houston translation services providers can lead you to a trustworthy company to work with.
Translation experts understand different cultures on top of their language expertise. Working with a professional can help you not only translate your content, but also localize it so that it resonates better with your audience. They can help avoid cultural nuances that can easily offend your clients.
Translate your social media platforms
In addition to your website, your social media platforms are the next place that your clients will want to connect with your business. Moreover, they would want to connect with you in a language that they understand. It would benefit you to do some research on your target audiences to identify the popular languages as well as the social platforms to target. It would be a waste to translate a platform that people speaking that language rarely frequent. Also, social media is notorious for inventing new words and trending topics. You have a task of ensuring that these words are translated well to avoid cultural nuances. Again, you need to work with a professional to ensure proper translation.
Offer 24/7 multilingual support
When dealing with multilingual customers, the issue of time zones can be forgotten. At times customers across the globe might need help way past your office hours because of the time difference. However, you need to keep in mind that customers want expedited help whether you are open or not. In this case providing 24/7 self-service tools is paramount.
Most people would first try to diagnose a problem before reaching out for help. You can ensure that your customers are able to help themselves easily by providing a knowledge base on your website. This is a centralized database where customers can search and find the information they need about your products whenever they need it. To cater for your multilingual customer base, ensure that the knowledge base is translated to the languages of your target customers.
Leverage chatbots
Chatbots can also be utilized to offer round the clock customer support. But, that is not all they can do to enhance multilingual customer satisfaction. Chatbots can detect a customer’s language based on browser settings, IP address and more and provide answers in the language of the customer. In addition, chatbots can be trained to diagnose customer queries and send them to the most appropriate departments. This way, the customers don’t have to be tossed around, which expedites the process of finding help.
Hire multilingual support staff
On top of leveraging technology to offer support for your multilingual customers, adding a human touch can also be beneficial in enhancing customer satisfaction. In this case, adding a live chat to your website ensures instant communication with a live agent. Hiring native language speakers who understand the culture nuances allows customers to communicate with agents who speak their language. The multilingual staff can also be helpful in translating emails and other customer queries for appropriate departments and then replying to customers in their languages.
Conclusion
When you decide to go global with your business, it is important to keep in mind that you are exposing your business to multilingual and multicultural customers. Start thinking of ways to provide multilingual support early on for improved customer experience. To this end, translating your website and social media accounts ensures that customers connect with you in their preferred languages. Additionally, aim to offer 24/7 support with multilingual self-service tools such as translating knowledge base and utilizing chatbots.
Related: The Importance of Translation in Better Client Communication