As organisations expand across borders, multilingual call centres are a business essential. This is particularly true for large countries where several languages are spoken, even if you do not cater to international customers. Businesses in countries like Canada, the US, and India must invest in multilingual call centres to ensure support service access for the entire customer base.
Unfortunately, there is a sizable gap between market demand and capabilities. 86% of contact centres have non-English speaking customers, but just 66% have a formalised support option in a language other than English.
To address this challenge, you need to set up a multilingual call centre. Here are 5 steps to set up a multilingual call centre
Select Your Location Judiciously
There are several options when it comes to deciding a multilingual call centre’s location – you could launch a centre in the country whose customers you want to serve. You could add on multilingual capabilities in your existing centre, or you could open a separate centre for the required language in your HQ country itself. The decision will depend on the availability of multilingual skills, agent costs, and the geographic scalability of your infrastructure.
Acquire Toll-free Numbers
Toll-free numbers that are easy to remember can improve the customer experience, particularly if they are from a different country of origin and hesitate to contact a non-local brand for the first time. You could consider different numbers for different languages, or configure your IVR, for language-based call routing.
Adopt Multilingual Call Centre Software
The right software can get you analytics insights on calls in different languages, understand language-based demand patterns, and help upskill agents accordingly. The software should also support system navigation in different languages through a multilingual UI.