As companies look into new ways to improve their customer experience, many have added multilingual support to serve more customers while creating brand loyalty. This is because a study from the Center for Immigration found that 67.3 million residents in the United States speak a language other than English in their homes. That is larger than the population of several European nations, including France, Italy, and Spain. It means providing multilingual support is more vital than ever before. However, to take your customer experience to the next level, you’ll need to commit to utilizing multilingual support.
Research the Language Needs of Your Customers
A study published by Harvard Business Review found that people prefer companies and brands that offer information in their native languages and are more likely to buy from these companies as well. Boosting your Customer Experience with multilingual support is more accessible than most people think. It begins with researching the top languages spoken in the markets you serve. Language data is also widely available via the United States Census Bureau. Combining this data with the language preference information you have collected about your customers will be a good foundation for deciding on the languages you will offer and support.
Exploring Customer Channels For Multilingual Support
First, you will need to explore which channels customers are currently finding you. By knowing all the channels and exploring new ones to bring additional customers, you have the potential to create a truly multilingual omnichannel customer experience that serves everyone. Below are some popular channels where multilingual support is often placed:
1. Contact Center
Adding multilingual support to your contact centers can immediately boost your customer experience by ensuring every customer receives the same level of service, regardless of their language, culture, or locale. As noted earlier, tens of millions of people in the U.S. speak a language other than English. By addressing the language needs of this significant yet underserved demographic, you can vastly improve your market share.
Phone support is often the heart of contact centers. Multilingual over-the-phone interpretation (OPI) support can empower your agents to handle calls in various languages. Teaming up with a language service provider that offers OPI instantly gives your agents 24/7/365 access to on-demand interpreters. For many contact centers, this is a cost-effective way to improve their multilingual support without having to commit in-house resources or make the significant, ongoing financial investment required to hire and retain multilingual staff.
2. Website
There are many benefits to translating and localizing your website. For starters, it can increase your potential audience by boosting your site’s accessibility, so more people can access it, thus becoming your customers. In addition, from a customer experience perspective, translate the support pages on your website, such as FAQs, product information, and essential updates. Doing this keeps all customers, regardless of their language, informed so that they are satisfied and more likely to become loyal customers.
3. Email Campaigns
Email remains a preferred customer communication channel. It continues to grow in popularity. Providing email communications and campaigns in your customers’ preferred languages better serves their needs and is one more touchpoint that improves your customers’ experience.
4. Social Media
According to the Datareportal, there are 4.76 billion active social media accounts, equating to 54.9 percent of the global population. In addition, the average user spends 2.5 hours daily on social media, checking 7.2 different social platforms. This data shows why multilingual content is highly demanded on social media platforms.
With the aid of a translation agency, you can convert your valuable social media content into the languages of the new audiences you wish to target. In addition, it will give your social media brand improved visibility and engagement. When working with a translator, you will want to create a workflow wherein you coordinate the publication of your translated social media content in advance so that it is posted simultaneously in all languages.
5. Subtitling Videos
Using subtitles on videos can improve customer experience. Videos can take all forms, including tutorials, interviews, reviews, testimonials, recorded events, advertisements, and documentaries. If you are using video to communicate with customers, enhancing it with translated subtitles will help you reach new audiences in new languages.
How Can BIG Language Help You?
Partner with BIG Language Services to improve your multilingual support in these dynamic and ever-expanding channels. BIG has over 160 years of combined expertise. Through our portfolio, we customize and deliver language services in more than 300 languages and dialects.
Contact us to see how we can help you achieve global success today!
