To cater to globally expanding brands, more and more customer support providers are starting to build multilingual teams. As opposed to English-only outsourcing companies, multilingual call centers can communicate with diverse consumer sectors regardless of lingual differences. This allows them to foster strong customer relations based on trust and understanding.
However, these multicultural organizations have their own set of problems, too, especially when it comes to team management. As a business strategy, multilingualism can indeed give you a competitive edge. But to make it work, you need to carefully plan and anticipate the issues you may encounter.
Here are the three biggest difficulties you may face and some tips for dealing with them.
1. Rising talent costs
Take for example Metro Manila in the Philippines, one of the world's most preferred outsourcing locations. Here, multilingual call centers offer some of the highest-paying jobs for fresh graduates.
However, the salaries of multilinguals may differ from place to place depending on the availability of the talent pool. In the Philippines, for instance, which is an Asian nation, finding someone fluent in Asian languages such as Mandarin and Korean may be easier than finding someone fluent in a European tongue. Thus, Philippine multilingual outsourcing companies may end up paying more for the latter because they're harder to come by.
2. Creating multilingual training programs
For better results, you may need to create separate training programs depending on the language an agent speaks. Aside from driving up training costs, this setup is also more difficult to implement. You may even need to hire communication trainers for each of your customer service languages. This is to ensure that your agents' specific training needs are being met.
3. Increasing attrition rates