2022 Trends In Multilingual Support

It’s no secret providing excellent customer service is critical to customer retention. In fact, data from Forbes indicates that 96% of all customers will switch service providers to experience better customer service.

But evolving technology and a shifting global landscape have contributed to heightened customer expectations. Netomi reports that more than 65% of people have higher expectations of customer service than they did three to five years ago. With customer expectations increasing, it means providing truly excellent customer service is more involved than ever.

Among these growing expectations is the demand for brands to engage with customers in their preferred language. Data from CSA Research shows that 76% of online shoppers prefer buying products from businesses that offer information in their native language, while 40% outright refuse to buy from websites that don’t. Furthermore, 75% of consumers say they are more likely to work with a brand if customer support is provided in their language.

As brands strategize on ways to meet the growing demands of global customers for multilingual support, we’ve put together four tips- and one bonus tip based on an upcoming trend- to help organizations provide excellent customer service in 2022.

1. Elevate Your Customer Experience

While customer expectations have been consistently increasing over the past several years, this was only expedited by the pandemic. The COVID-induced wave of virtual experiences, video appointments, and contactless delivery has conditioned consumers to expect their interactions with brands to be seamless, fast, and efficient.

All this means that customers expect the companies they do business with to respond to their issues immediately, through instant channels like on-site chat or social media. Not only do they want to resolve issues quickly and effectively, they also expect to be able to speak with someone in their own language–meaning the onus is on brands to provide real-time customer support in any language spoken by their customers.

2. Expand Multilingual Self-Service Options

While agent-based support is both in-demand and critical for resolving customer issues, many customers want to be able to solve their problems, and it’s up to brands to provide them the resources to do so. In addition to providing agent-based chat support, brands should also have a chatbot in place to field common questions and provide helpful answers in the language being spoken by the customer.

The same goes for FAQ pages and knowledge-based articles, such as those built into Salesforce. Developing a comprehensive library of translated help articles can net excellent results for brands. One of our customers, an online marketing provider, had an extensive library of English knowledge base articles within Salesforce and recognized the need to provide self-service options to non-English speaking customers as well. Upon offering translations for Latin American Spanish, French, and German, the company saw a 700% increase in unique visitors to its knowledge base in Salesforce and a 550% increase in article views over the course of a year.

Data like this clearly shows that global customers want to be able to help themselves solve problems, as long as there’s content available to them in their preferred language.

3. Provide Real-Time Translation on Customer Service Channels

When customers seek support from brands, not only are they looking for real-time responses, they’re also looking for real-time responses in their preferred language. This demand for instantaneous translation also results in an increased demand for technology that can quickly and accurately translate conversational content.

For brands, it’s critical to have in place technology that supports real-time translation of chat-based content, whether you’re supporting customers using Salesforce Chat or on social media.

4. Incorporate Flexible and Versatile Translation Services

In an effort to support multilingual customers, some brands may think it’s best to hire a support agent or entire team to accommodate each potential language their customers may speak. But even if an organization can overcome talent shortages and secure the staff to make this a reality, for the majority of businesses this route is both cost-prohibitive and exceptionally time-consuming.

An example of where brands often get bogged down from a cost and time perspective is in the chatbot-to-live agent workflow. In cases where a user consults a chatbot, such as one powered by Einstein, there are instances in which the chatbot cannot alone resolve the user’s issue and sends them to a live agent for further support. Without machine translation, adapting this process for multiple languages requires a significant amount of resources. That means brands need to both manually translate the chatbot script and implement it for each language spoken by customers and have live agents who speak those languages available on-demand when customers need them. It’s a costly, unscalable solution.

What makes more sense for brands is to implement a layer of machine translation between the chatbot and the user, regardless of which language that user speaks. The machine translation solution then translates the chatbot script and user’s content in real-time. If the chatbot is unable to resolve the user’s issue on its own, the user is then sent to a live agent who may not speak the same language as them but can communicate with them because of the machine translation solution in place. This allows support teams to rely on fewer individual agents, making the team more efficient while also maintaining customer satisfaction.

5. BONUS FUTURE TREND: Support Multilingual Voice Search

Voice search is growing exponentially, with Google reporting more than a quarter of the global population uses voice search on mobile. Consumers’ increasing dependence on voice search for information means that brands’ websites and content must be optimized not just for how consumers search, but also how they speak, regardless of the language used.

Global brands must start thinking about how to support voice searches, such as by adding more conversational content to their websites to mirror how people speak. This will result in a need for more advanced translation solutions to accommodate common aspects of conversational speech, including jargon, brand-specific terms, and acronyms.

Supporting Your Global Customers in 2022

The data is clear: how global brands approach customer experience is more important than ever. While it’s true that customers are expecting more from their interactions with support teams, these expectations aren’t unreasonable or impossible to accommodate. Brands that prioritize meeting customer needs by implementing advanced technologies and facilitating hyper-personalized communications will win the loyalty of customers and set the foundation for growth in the years to come.