Live Chat — The Ideal Way to Deal with a Multi-Lingual Customer Base

Businesses that sell products and services across borders have to deal with providing customer support in multiple languages. This is an expensive and nail-biting question when providing seamless customer care. Traditional ways of providing multilingual customer support, phone and email have been problematic for various reasons. However, live chat has been emerging as a headache-free solution for providing multilingual customer support. Let’s look at why that may be so:

No Accents Involved

The biggest problem businesses face when providing multi-language customer care is accents. Translators and customers may encounter accents that they are not used to in everyday life and are thus hard to understand. When customers call a business, usually it’s to complain. A customer could be angered further by a foreign accent he or she might not comprehend well. Live chat support, however, doesn’t encounter accent issues. All inquiries are typed out, and are easy for every party to understand.

No Vocal Misunderstandings

Accent is not the only thing that may hinder traditional customer support. When people are from different countries, they may use words and phrases that may not necessarily translate well across cultural boundaries. This means it’s easy to misunderstand another if they are not from the same place as you. Phone and e-mail support can encounter such socio-linguistic problems. The perk of live chat is that if such a misunderstanding occurs, it can be immediately solved. With e-mail support, a representative and a customer could end up emailing back and forth for weeks without realising what the other wants. Live chat is largely conducted based on internationally recognised abbreviations and emoticons. So, there’s less room for devastating misunderstandings.

Use Simultaneously with Translation Software

A customer representative can easily have a translation software open in one window when using live chat. For example, if the rep doesn’t understand a word an international client uses, it can be immediately translated on Google. The customer will never know a delay occurred, unlike with a phone call. Customers, too, can benefit in this manner.

No Need for Expensive Translators

Providing call support is expensive. Providing customer care by phone to different countries is almost like running another business itself. Hiring multilingual call centre employees is extremely expensive. Translators are skilled workers and they do not work cheaply. Therefore, multilingual customer support is over budget for many businesses. With live chat, even a small business can provide multi-country customer support without having to hire expensive translators. Reps can use translation software. Also, even a customer with rudimentary understanding of English can send a comprehensible instant message asking a question.

Multilingual support is necessary for your business to succeed globally. As your company expands overseas, live chat will help your business offer customer support to many clients in different countries without added costs.