It’s ten minutes past 2 pm. A new high-value customer submits a technical complaint—but, in Spanish. The problem? None of your service reps speak Spanish.
Now, you have only two options.
First, you say, “Thank you for reaching out. We currently accept queries only in English. Please resend your message in English so we can assist you. Thank you for your understanding!"
Or, you scramble from Google’s translator to other free versions of online interpreters, which might give you an inaccurate response.
Whichever you choose, your customer will likely not find it encouraging. Your inability to efficiently serve customers in their native language passes a message; that they’re not a valued part of your brand.
According to Hyken’s report, 65% of consumers want to be treated valuably. Failure to deliver this expectation results in a poor support experience, increased churn rates, and a negative brand reputation.
To avoid such outcomes, you need to implement multilingual customer support, and this article will show you how to do that.
What is multilingual customer support?
Multilingual customer support is the ability to provide consistent, high-quality assistance in multiple languages to your customers while accounting for geographical, cultural, and contextual differences that influence communication.
As your business scales, there is also an increasing need to serve a diverse market audience. This mandates your support team to be capable of sustaining interactions with individuals of different languages outside your native business borders.
Even within your business borders, you’re bound to interact with customers of different linguistic needs. According to the United States Census record, the number of residents who utilize other languages besides English has nearly tripled in the last decade.
So, you must be ready to cater to this diversity once necessary.
Benefits of multilingual customer support
Multilingual support increases customer satisfaction, boosts retention, and ensures you can tap into diverse markets for more opportunities. Here’s how it does that:
Improved customer satisfaction
According to Unbabel’s 2021 multilingual CX report, one in three global consumers cite a lack of multilingual support as their top concern in localized customer experience.
Uni- or bilingual provisions lead to frustration since your customers can’t express themselves the way they want, and this culminates in a bad customer experience.
On the other hand, providing multilingual support can enhance customer satisfaction and boost your customers’ LTV. This explains why 64% say they will pay more for a service or product if the brand offers a multilingual support service.
Higher customer retention
57% of global consumers see it as a bias when a brand fails to offer multilingual support. Two in three will also switch to another brand if their current brand does not offer broader language support.
But what happens if you fill up this communication gap? 73% of respondents in Unbabel’s survey say they will remain loyal.
This means multilingual provisions can help you retain your existing customers and also gain an edge over your competitors in attracting new ones.
Interestingly, 40% of consumers will likely overlook poor customer service many times if it is offered in their native language. This gives you enough time to address issues plaguing your support delivery before customers bounce.
Broader reach and competitive advantage
Scaling your business often requires crossing borders and serving new audiences. Multilingual support ensures you can easily resolve the issues coming up in these regions, eliminate communication barriers, and rapidly build a robust brand reputation.
Also, multilingual support can serve as the spearhead of your competitive advantage in new markets. That’s because your potential customers will likely choose you over competitors who do not offer multilingual support, all things being equal. So, you can make it a focus of your marketing strategy.
7 must-know strategies to implement multilingual support
One in four consumers say they will not spend more than $500 on brands offering limited language support. You can avoid this by implementing a sturdy multilingual support system.
Let’s go through how you can do that.
1. Be upfront about your available language options
First, inform your customers and audience about your current capacity. Include the languages you support on your website, applications, social media profiles, and customer support pages.
This helps to manage customer expectations and reduce frustrations pending the time you make provisions for multiple languages.
2. Embrace diversity in recruitment
The most direct approach to creating a multilingual support system is to recruit multilingual customer service reps. These reps are especially crucial for managing L2 and L3 tiers of requests that AI might not be able to handle.
Ensure you have at least one native or non-native representative for each region you serve. You can also organize language training for your existing service reps instead of overhauling the entire team.
This reduces your employee acquisition cost and helps you work with people already in tandem with your support operations.
3. Use AI chatbots to provide multilingual support
Advanced AI chatbots use ML and NLP to analyze user inputs such as complaints and provide appropriate responses while leveraging customer data. This is like having an inbuilt translation system, making them a good fit for handling multilingual L1 requests regardless of the language.
As an omnichannel platform designed to scale your support team, Plivo CX offers an OpenAI-powered chatbot capable of handling multilingual tickets and addressing your customers in the language they choose.
4. Integrate multilingual voice support
According to a 2024 report from Statista, 54% of customers prefer to resolve issues via phone calls over other digital channels and email. To cater to this group, you need to integrate multilingual voice support technology.
An example is Plivo CX’s voice software, which prompts your customers to choose their preferred language from over 27 supported languages right on the call.
With an integrated programmable IVR, your callers can self-select options for quicker routing, shorter wait times, and faster resolution.
5. Offer language preferences in self-service options
Self-service options include FAQs, knowledge bases, chatbots, AI-powered virtual assistants, and community forums. Your customers must be able to choose their preferred language of interaction on all of these platforms in order to cater to their needs.
Additionally, ensure that automated responses, IVR systems, and in-app customer support are available in multiple languages.
6. Train support agents in cultural sensitivity
Multilingual support should cater to lingua-cultural nuances that affect communication. Otherwise, you risk irking your customers.
For instance, there are certain words or expressions that might be normal in American English but seen as aggressive in British English.
One example is the word “sure.” To an American, it’s simply a means of acknowledgment. But it could come off as passive-aggressive to a non-American.
Train your support reps to understand these nuances and avoid them when speaking with individuals of different cultural backgrounds.
7. Localize knowledge base and FAQs
Language location refers to adapting your website content to a visitor’s regional language based on factors like their browser settings, IP address, or geographical location.
o do this, you first need to translate your knowledge base and FAQs into the different languages you support. You can do this manually or with AI. Then let your web development team handle the transitioning.
This method spares customers the hassle of manually selecting their preferred language. However, you should still offer a visible option on your support pages for them to adjust language preferences if needed.
Deliver modern multilingual support with Plivo CX
Language differences stifle quality support delivery and effective communication.
To help you, Plivo CX offers a multilingual omnichannel support system through its Unified Agent Desktop, OpenAI-powered agentic chatbot, and inclusive voice support to help you overcome these challenges.
We also offer:
- Seamless integrations: Connect Plivo CX with your existing tools, including CRM, ERP, helpdesk, and more.
- Data-driven optimization: Track real-time analytics and generate custom reports to gain insights into customer interactions and agent performance.
- AI-enhanced efficiency: Prioritize urgent tickets, ensure brand consistency, and adapt quickly to changes with AI-powered support.
- Rich communication: Enhance interactions with multimedia support, including images, videos, and documents.
- Increased productivity: Streamline workflows with message templates, internal notes, and skills-based routing.
- Comprehensive features: Leverage call recording, IVR, multi-language support, and robust security features for a complete solution.
