Often times we have discussed why there is a need for multilingual websites and how to make sure that such websites are properly localized. However, it is important to note that aside these two there is always a need to provide full support for your new customers in the new market location. Multilingual support for your website.
This is one thing many owners of businesses forget to pay attention to. It is easy to forget that your new customers from other parts of the world will most likely need help in their languages as they buy your products or patronize your services.
In most of the market researches, it has been proven that many customers are very much likely to buy a product more than once and likely going to use services when the support of the products and services are available in the customers’ local languages. An example of such researches is that of done by Common Sense Advisory where it was stated that about 74% of buyers and users of products and services are likely to buy again or reuse services anything such products and services offer support in their native language.
While it is true that such statistic is a massive one, it can be extremely difficult for upcoming businesses to hire or outsource support agent for multilingual because of the cost that comes along with it. That is why in this article, we will be discussing the benefits that comes along with having a multilingual support as well as how you can use a solution that is not costly to do this with your customer getting satisfied.
Let us quickly dig into the meaning of the term multilingual support.
What is multilingual support?
Simply put, multilingual support is when you give or offer the same help or support for your customers in languages other than English language or the base language of your business.When it comes to multilingual support, you should keep in mind that customers in your new market location or your targeted location should be able to benefit from such supports in the language of their choice.
You can make this possible by making a choice of either to handle the support through an outsourcing agent or support, hire a multiple language support agent, and/or ensure that your support documents are well translated.
Why it is best to offer multilingual support
You must be able and ready to serve your customers in different languages once you are determined to extend the sales of your products and the rendering of your services beyond your immediate boundary.
It will be very difficult for customers in a region with different language to know that your website is not based in their language if you are perfect and correct with your website localization. They may even have the thoughts that your business is situated in their home location. What can be infer from this is that customers from these locations with different languages other than your based language for your website will expect you to offer customer support that is of quality to them in their native tongue an must be as quality as the same customer support for your base language.
With the advanced in various aspect of life which includes language, language should no longer pose a problem to marketing your products and services.
And another reason it is worth it to have a multilingual support is that customers tends to be more loyal and loyally stick to companies and brands that offers customer support in the language of their heart.
As earlier mentioned in this article, hiring or outsourcing multilingual customer support may not be that advisable and implementable for some smaller sized or medium scale businesses. This is because the financial commitment that goes with doing such can be difficult or burdensome for such ones to bear or shoulder. However, there is still a way to handle this. If you will like to start offering multilingual support, there are few things you consider. Your deliberation and answer to the following question that will be discussed will help you get a clearer view of what you can do about it.
What level of support do you need to give to your customer?
Deciding which language you will dedicate customer support to can be dependent on the market location where the revenue you are getting as returns are great or possibly where you thought of as having greater business sales and profit potentials.
Also, you should start analyzing the kind of support questions that are regularly being raised by your customers and try to find out if there are the difficult complex ones. As another point of suggestion, you may want to add a native speaker of such language to members of your customer support team.
Having a team that is locally oriented for that specific market location is non-negotiable when you have a big presence in the market and doing this will be satisfactorily rewarding. In fact, it is sad to say that some companies or brands as much as 29% have lost valuable customers because of their negligence to multilingual support according to intercom.
For starters there is still hope if they wants to offer customer support in multiple languages but how?
Get your knowledge base localized
Having your knowledge base in more than one language is prerequisite to offering a multilingual support for your customers. It is not cost exhaustive, not tiring, and help you to offer support to your customers without having to consider the size of your budget.
If you are just starting to penetrate into the international market, it is best to build a knowledge base that contains a comprehensive list of questions you are mostly asked. You may now wonder how you will have this knowledge base rendered in various other languages. Do not become overly anxious as ConveyThis is an effective translation solution that can help you get the knowledge base translated with almost immediate effect into many different languages as the case may be.
Videos, welcoming or introductory information, frequently asked questions (FAQs), how-to etc. are essentially components that made up what is called a knowledge base. Now you can see that there is more to translation than rendering only texts in multiple language. In fact, there are some brands that ensured that subtitles that are translated for videos on their website or even hire someone who serves in the voiceover capacity for that language. That is an advantage for you when you use ConveyThis. ConveyThis can help you change the video from the source language for the appropriate language.
Also, put in mind that people thanks to learn and understand things with visual aids. So, it will be a warming help to your customers to see that the answers to their questions is presented in such a way that drives home the point using appropriate visual aids. Therefore where possible, use enough images and picture to drive home the points.
Benefits of having a translated knowledge base
Below are some of the benefits of having a translated knowledge base:
- Improved customer experience: customers are more likely to be relaxed when they surf through pages of your knowledge base in the language of their heart. This kind of nice user/customer experience will not only build but help you maintain retention rates. This is advantageous because getting new customers may not be easy, hence old ones should be retained.
- New customers: it is easy to always want to turn back if you discover that you cannot find help or receive one in your desired language when trying to buy a product, or seek certain services. Therefore, potential customers will be more inclined and more confident to buy from you when you have a translated knowledge base. And when such ones receive this warming supports they are more likely to recommend your brand to others.
- Reduced number of tickets for customers seeking help: when customers are having many concerns you are more likely to have increased volume of requests for customers support. However, this large number of requests can be reduced if customers can readily find what they are looking for in the knowledge base. This provides the help they needed with ease and no delay thereby reducing the workloads for the customer support team. A well translated knowledge base will help customers to resolve their issues without resorting to looking for direct response from a customer support.
- Indexed SEO: when the documents in your knowledge base are well translated, you can be assured of a better ranking in the new language you gets the documents translated into especially when the keywords are rightly rendered. This will be promising you an increase traffic on your website.
Now we have the big question: what else?
The truth as it has been reiterated in this article is that when you offer a better customer support for your customers, you will likely witness more sales as they tends to return because of the experience they have patronizing your brand. At this point, the next thing for you now is to offer your knowledge base in more than few languages. And you can start this by signing up to ConveyThis today as this will help you to get your knowledge base translated into close to 100 languages without stress.