One of the most asked questions is definitely this: how to choose right languages for your multilingual customer support team? You know you need it, but you’re not sure how to pick and choose in the multitude of options.
Determining which languages your multilingual support team should cover is a strategic decision, one that requires careful consideration of your current customer base and future market goals. This article will guide you through the process of choosing the right languages for your multilingual customer support, ensuring that you effectively meet the needs of your diverse clientele.
Analyzing Your Target Market and Customer Base
The first step in choosing the right languages for your support team is to thoroughly analyze your current and potential customer base. How can you effectively do this?
There are a few strategies to implement when conducting a market analysis. First and foremost, you have to analyse available customer data. Customer data is all the information that already exist about your clientele. The one you will pay special attention to is the predominant languages spoken among them. When you analyses the data and identified the main languages your customers speak, you’ve started the process of finding the right languages.
But, customer data analysis isn’t the end of the process. After that, you need to conduct market research. The goal of this process should be understanding of linguistic preferences of your target markets. This is important for your existing markets, but especially so if you are planning to expand into new regions.
Furthermore, an analysis of your competitors has to be conducted. Review the languages they offer. Try to identify any gaps in the markets and, even more importantly, possible opportunities. One usually leads to the other and figuring it out early on has great potential for business success and/or expansion.
Prioritizing Languages for Maximum Impact
After the process of analyzing the target market and customer base is finished, choosing a language for your customer support team becomes easier. You have the data, from languages your current and future customers speak, to market needs and competitor activities. Prioritizing a language that will have the most significant impact on your customer support effectiveness and business growth is crucial.
There is a couple of criteria for language selection. Some of them are volume of speakers, business growth opportunities and resource availability.
To distinguish the volume of speakers for a language is actually easy. Pick up the data for your customer base, see which languages they speak and then focus on the languages that are spoken by a large portion of your customer base or target market. If most of your consumers speaks English, then English should be the first language implemented in your multilingual support. If there is an even number of English and German speakers, then German and English it is.
Also, keep in mind possible business growth and opportunities. Consider languages that align with your business expansion plans and – even more importantly – growth opportunities! If you’re planning to expand into German market, but most of your current customers speak English, than investing into multilingual support that covers both languages is probably important for you.
Resource availability is the last part of the puzzle. You need to assess the availability and accessibility of skilled customer support agents fluent in chosen languages. Realizing that there aren’t enough speakers of the needed language available for building your team probably means you will need to find other solutions, like outsourcing.
The Role of Outsourcing in Multilingual Support
Outsourcing your multilingual customer support can be a practical solution, especially when dealing with less common languages or when scaling up to meet growing demand. Outsourcing partners typically have a wide network of multilingual support professionals. It can also be a more cost-effective than hiring and training an in-house team for each language. And last but not least, flexibility and scalability. Outsourcing allows for more flexibility and scalability in response to fluctuating customer demands and market changes.
Looking to expand your business’s global reach with a skilled multilingual customer support team? Contact MTM Creator for comprehensive outsourcing solutions. Let us help you select the ideal languages and provide expert support to enhance your customer experience and drive business growth.
