As businesses expand globally, having an exceptional support team becomes increasingly vital. In fact, 29% of businesses lose customers due to a lack of multilingual support, and 40% of global consumers avoid brands that don’t offer service in their native language.
To effectively reach diverse audiences, your customer service team must include experts who can communicate in multiple languages, adapt to cultural norms, and build lasting connections. In the fintech sector, multilingual customer service is not just a luxury—it’s a necessity. Given the competitive market, customers can easily switch to competitors if their needs aren’t met.
This article explores the benefits of multilingual customer support, how to implement it effectively, and the common challenges businesses may encounter. Keep reading to learn more.
Benefits of Multilingual Customer Support in Fintech
Only 18.07% of the world population speaks English. To ensure your business thrives, adopting multilingual customer support is crucial. Here’s how this strategy can help your business succeed:
Improved Brand Image
Offering multilingual customer support underscores your commitment to providing excellent service. It demonstrates that you value inclusivity, showing customers that you care about them, respect their backgrounds, and prioritize their convenience. This approach not only enhances customer satisfaction but also strengthens your brand’s reputation as one that genuinely values its diverse customer base.
This is exemplified by Skyline’s case study with Digilicenses. Digilicenses faced issues with slow resolution times, poor team communication, and difficulties in finding customer support that could effectively manage international customers. They found a solution with Skyline Live Support, which provided a dedicated team of trained professionals for their multilingual customer service needs.
Skyline’s team familiarized themselves with Digilicenses’ account well before the contract began and offered 24/7 support. The results were transformative, significantly improving the company’s brand image. Here’s a detailed look at the positive changes:
Before Skyline:
After Skyline:
Increased Brand Loyalty
Customers can express their issues and concerns more effectively in their native language. With your multilingual customer support, you can promptly address their needs, minimize misunderstandings, reduce frustration, and ensure seamless communication. This level of support makes customers feel valued and understood, encouraging them to remain loyal to your brand.
Win International Clients
According to Intercom’s survey, only 28% of 170 SaaS consumers received support in their native language, while 35% expressed a willingness to switch to providers that offer multilingual support. This presents a valuable opportunity for your business to capitalize on, attracting customers who feel underserved by other providers. Adopting multilingual support allows you to differentiate your brand and encourage others to switch to your services.
Efficiency and Productivity
A multilingual support team can easily understand customers, reducing the risk of miscommunication. This leads to shorter phone calls or live chat sessions and faster issue resolution. As a result, customer representatives can assist the next customer more quickly, boosting productivity and efficiency.
When Digilicenses partnered with Skyline, their productivity soared. They increased their email handling from 70,000 per year to 276,000 after the collaboration. This impressive improvement highlights how trained experts can significantly boost efficiency and increase output. Here is a visual representation of Digilicenses’ ticket traffic:
Before Skyline:
After Skyline:
In the fintech industry, where time is critical, this efficiency is essential. For example, when customers are crypto trading and encounter an issue, they expect prompt assistance. If no representative can understand or help them, it could lead to frustration and dissatisfaction, potentially driving them to switch to your competitors.
Opportunity for Product Enhancement
As you connect with more people, you’ll gain valuable feedback and fresh ideas from diverse perspectives. This input allows you to refine your products or services and make adjustments that better suit customers from various regions. Understanding that customers’ needs can vary based on their location and specific circumstances, this approach ensures your offerings are more tailored and impactful, leading to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Challenges in Achieving Effective Multilingual Customer Support
Like any other aspect of business, building a strong customer support system, especially a multilingual one, comes with its challenges. Here are some you might face along the way:
Finding and Training Multilingual Staff
Finding the right candidates for your customer service team is challenging enough, but recruiting for a multilingual team adds another layer of complexity. Evaluating each applicant’s proficiency in multiple languages and their cultural understanding can be particularly daunting and time-consuming.
Moreover, training must be consistent to keep representatives updated on cultural nuances and evolving language trends. This process can be resource-intensive, requiring significant effort to screen, train, and retain skilled talent.
Providing 24/7 Support
Establishing multilingual customer support involves serving customers across various time zones, which necessitates hiring multiple sets of multilingual representatives to cover different shifts. This approach requires significant investment to manage their schedules and compensate for their services.
Ensuring Consistent Quality
As you accommodate more languages, it’ll become more challenging to ensure that all information and translations written in different languages are accurate. It’s also important to ensure that they’re culturally sensitive. Therefore, you need to invest a lot in hiring the right specialist, integrating the right technology, and maintaining consistent agent training.
Having Adjustable Communication Styles
Every nationality has its unique communication style, and your multilingual customer support team needs to adapt to these nuances to connect more deeply with customers. Additionally, diverse customer expectations require varying approaches to ensure satisfaction and effective service delivery.
Implementing Multilingual Support in Fintech
It takes careful planning and execution to ensure a successful multilingual customer support adoption. Here are some ways you can implement your multilingual support effectively:
Identify Your Customer’s Spoken Language
With over 7,100 spoken languages worldwide, relying on just one language to serve your audience puts you at a disadvantage. However, you don’t need to cover every language. Instead, focus on understanding your target audience by analyzing where your online traffic originates and which countries generate significant sales. Additionally, gathering direct feedback from your customers can help identify their language preferences and guide your multilingual support strategy.
Make Your Website and Support Channels Multilingual
A key aspect of excellent customer service is enabling customers to find answers independently. Empower your users by providing the option to translate your website into their native language. This reduces their need to wait in queues for a representative, boosting customer satisfaction and lowering ticket rates. It also allows your agents to focus on more complex issues.
Make sure your website includes FAQs, product information, troubleshooting guides, and how-to directions in multiple languages. While setting this up may require significant initial effort, it requires minimal ongoing maintenance. This is particularly crucial in the fintech sector, where some transactions are time-sensitive.
Invest in Language Training Programs
If you have an existing multilingual team, it’s crucial to offer ongoing language training to maintain and enhance their proficiency. Continuous training ensures that their language skills stay sharp and their communication abilities improve over time.
Cultural sensitivity training is equally important. It helps your team understand and navigate cultural nuances, leading to more respectful and empathetic interactions. This not only strengthens their connection with customers but also fosters stronger and longer-lasting relationships.
Leverage AI and Chatbots
In today’s world, not utilizing AI and chatbots can put you at a disadvantage. Integrate AI chatbots into your system to provide 24/7 support. These can be programmed to handle inquiries in multiple languages, allowing your team to focus on more complex tasks.
However, it’s important to remember that the human touch remains crucial for a truly satisfying customer service experience. While AI and chatbots can effectively address a wide range of issues, having a team capable of personal, empathetic communication is still essential for building strong customer relationships.
Outsource a Multilingual Customer Service
One of the most cost-effective and efficient strategies for enhancing customer service is to outsource to a multilingual service provider. This approach not only saves you the effort and resources required to onboard an in-house team but also reduces long-term costs associated with training, office space, tools, equipment, and employee benefits. Additionally, there are affordable and high-quality multilingual customer service providers, particularly in Asia, such as Skyline Live Support Corp. This can be a smart choice for maintaining excellent customer support while managing expenses effectively.
Ready To Go Global With Confidence? Partner With Skyline For Unparalleled Multilingual Support
In today’s globalized market, multilingual support is not just an option but a crucial component of outstanding customer service. For fintech companies, where timely and clear communication is essential, integrating multilingual support can set your business apart from the competition. By catering to diverse linguistic needs, you enhance brand loyalty, attract international clients, and boost efficiency—all while building a positive brand image and improving your products based on valuable feedback.
Implementing multilingual support presents challenges, but with thoughtful planning and the right approach, the benefits far outweigh the hurdles. Prioritizing multilingual capabilities demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction and positions your company as a leader in the global fintech arena.
Ready to elevate your customer service with top-tier multilingual support? Skyline is here to help. Our expert team offers tailored, 24/7 multilingual support that ensures your customers feel valued and understood, no matter where they are in the world. Partner with Skyline to streamline your operations, boost productivity, and enhance your brand’s reputation. Contact us today to discover how our multilingual support solutions can drive your success in the fintech sector.
