Thanks to e-commerce, companies can greatly expand their sales market and actually sell their products or services anywhere in the world. But if you want to turn potential customers into actual paying customers, you have to speak your customers' language. This is borne out by research: 76% of online shoppers prefer products for which information is available in their native language. And you should not only think about product descriptions and the payment process on your website. With Customer Contact Week in Amsterdam this week, we thought it would be a good time to look at the benefits of multilingual customer support. Read on and we will give you five reasons why your company should communicate with customers in their own language.
With multilingual customer service, you work a lot more efficiently, boost brand loyalty among your customers and increase customer satisfaction. Request a free quote for your multilingual customer service page.
With so much competition, it can be difficult to keep customers committed to your brand for a long time. They often and easily switch to a competitor when they get a better offer. So how do you encourage brand loyalty? Multilingual customer service plays an important role here. In a survey by CSA Research, 75% of respondents said they are more likely to buy something again from a company if customer support is available in their own language.
No matter what you sell, your customers will always have questions or run into problems. Even if you employ multiple customer service agents, they can never handle all the issues: because they don't speak the language or simply because there are too many tickets coming in. By providing localized self-service capabilities, your international customers can solve many of their problems themselves. That means fewer tickets for your employees. Support staff can also improve their productivity and response time with advanced chat and email translation solutions.
Even before purchase, the availability of multilingual customer support can influence potential customers' choices. If customers cannot find localized answers to their questions in the exploratory phase, for example about international delivery options and times, there is a chance that they will drop out. A shame, because you can easily convince such customers with, for example, a Frequently Asked Questions page in multiple languages.
Price is not the only factor customers consider when making purchasing decisions. Sometimes they actually choose a more expensive product if they find that brand more reliable or if the service there is better. When you invest in information and support options in your customers' language, they feel more valued. Moreover, they then feel more confident about their purchase, especially those customers who doubt their own knowledge of a foreign language.
By accepting support requests from international customers, you have the opportunity to gather more feedback about your product or service. Understanding the needs of your international customers is important to the success of your business, as these needs may vary by market. With the feedback collected, you can continuously improve your product or service as customer needs change.
Ideally, you would hire a team of native support staff for each language and time zone. But we fully understand that this may not be a realistic step (yet). Fortunately, there are all sorts of other ways to provide support to your international customers. We recommend starting with online self-service options, such as a Frequently Asked Questions page and a Help section in multiple languages. You can also consider integration's and automated translations for real-time support via chat, email or chatbot to improve response times. When customers can communicate effortlessly with your company, and vice versa, you will see this reflected in higher sales and customer satisfaction scores worldwide. Scriptware Translations specializes in support content. Feel free to contact us if you are looking for a translation partner to help you achieve your goals.
