As organisations expand across borders, multilingual call centres are a business essential. This is particularly true for large countries where several languages are spoken, even if you do not cater to international customers. Businesses in countries like Canada, the US, and India must invest in multilingual call centres to ensure support service access for the entire customer base.
Unfortunately, there is a sizable gap between market demand and capabilities. 86% of contact centres have non-English speaking customers, but just 66% have a formalised support option in a language other than English.
To address this challenge, you need to set up a multilingual call centre. Here are 5 steps to set up a multilingual call centre
Select Your Location Judiciously
There are several options when it comes to deciding a multilingual call centre’s location – you could launch a centre in the country whose customers you want to serve. You could add on multilingual capabilities in your existing centre, or you could open a separate centre for the required language in your HQ country itself. The decision will depend on the availability of multilingual skills, agent costs, and the geographic scalability of your infrastructure.
Acquire Toll-free Numbers
Toll-free numbers that are easy to remember can improve the customer experience, particularly if they are from a different country of origin and hesitate to contact a non-local brand for the first time. You could consider different numbers for different languages, or configure your IVR, for language-based call routing.
Adopt Multilingual Call Centre Software
The right software can get you analytics insights on calls in different languages, understand language-based demand patterns, and help upskill agents accordingly. The software should also support system navigation in different languages through a multilingual UI.
Explore Outsourcing Options
Outsourcing is a highly popular strategy for multilingual call centres, as it lets you gain from ready talent among native language speakers without investing in hiring or in-house training. Outsourced contact centre providers look after multilingual service fulfilment from end-to-end, but there might be a trade-off in terms of product knowledge and cross-department data exchange.
Hire an External Language Interpreter
Language interpretation services by multilingual experts unlock the advantages of having a native speaker at hand, without having to completely outsource. 52.7% of organisations report that external interpreters achieve equal or better CSAT scores than internal bilingual agents, making this an attractive option.
Considerations to Keep in Mind
Diversifying call centre capabilities instead of letting agents specialise (whether in a single language, channel, or outbound/inbound) always has its own challenges. Not only are such agents difficult to find, but they may not bring the same level of quality to every interaction.
Cultural expectations are another factor. Even if you have bilingual agents available in-house, they may not be conversant with the cultural requirements of interacting with a customer from a different linguistic background.
For smaller organisations, who have to support different languages due to the nature of their business, it is a good idea to offer text-based support in different languages. That way, you can gain from online translation tools without spending on telephony diversification. And for large enterprises, outsourcing continues to be the most viable option.
