How to enhance the customer experience through professional translation

In an increasingly digital world where people move around on different platforms and interact using different channels, memorable experiences provided by organizations are essential. In their marketing strategies, leading companies focus on understanding their customers’ journeys and satisfying their needs and preferences.

Faced with this scenario, how crucial is a good translation for an excellent customer experience (CX)?

Speaking the same language as customers

“The evolution of the traditional call center to an omnichannel contact has allowed companies to view the function less as a cost driver and more as an opportunity to provide strategic, experience-driven customer care. With customers interacting via SMS, websites, chats and social media, identifying their reasons for initiating contact has become a core analytics use case for virtually any contact center operation,” indicates McKinsey & Company.

Organizations that demonstrate how customer satisfaction is associated with growth, margin and profitability are more likely to report customer experience (CX) success and 29% more likely to secure more CX budgets. Source: Gartner

And in a universe where players such as chatbots and social networks are used as tools, there are some basic points when creating a relevant customer experience, just as Think with Google specialists note:

● Frictionless experiences.
● Fast experiences.
● Personalized experiences.
● Useful experiences.
● Consistent experiences.

To boost sales, reach new customers, expand their horizons and position themselves in different markets, companies must “put themselves in the shoes” of their representatives, be empathetic to their concerns, create closeness and be cordial. In any of the Experiences described above, it is important to communicate in a simple and correct way with customers in their own language. Therefore, it is key to have a translation partner that understands the importance of the customers’ journey in order to make it unforgettable or at least unsurpassed by other competitors.

Professionals who understand every audience

Ensuring that customers and prospects receive information and advice in a fast, personalized, consistent and frictionless manner is a task that only specialized translation can achieve. Such an approach not only offers relevant experiences, but also boosts customer loyalty and facilitates a long-term relationship with brands.

The role of expert translators becomes key, as it allows for the elimination of “noise” in communications between organizations and consumers, while achieving personalized messages that respect the socio-cultural, political and conjunctural particularities of multiple target audiences.

Of the 2800 most visited websites analyzed, 63% supported multiple languages or regional setups, but the average branded site supported only 4.9 target languages. And only 376 sites were available in the 14 or more languages needed to reach 90% of the world’s online population. Source: CSA Research

In this sense, it is not only a matter of paying attention to grammar, semantics and spelling, but also of working with professionals who have an in-depth knowledge of idiomatic nuances, complex concepts and target cultures. It is also essential to hire comprehensive language services that include designers, programmers, translators, editors, proofreaders and other qualified professionals.

Not having a professional translation partner with comprehensive solutions can create more costs than benefits. First, organizations run the risk of delivering contradictory, unintelligible and even offensive messages to their audiences, which could cost them their client. Second, organizations often choose to use bilingual or multilingual internal team members to perform these tasks with the idea that the internal team is more knowledgeable about the product or service or “is cheaper”. In practice, these internal team members rarely have professional language training. They may be bilingual and experts in the product or service but not translators. In addition, translation work is imposed on them so that they must complete this task on top of everything else they must do in their day-to-day work. This leads to employee angst, lower productivity, translation delays, biased or unprofessional work quality, etc. In short, a very poor customer experience.

“Essentially, customer experience is about how people in your target market perceive your brand. If you don’t support their language, your market is reduced to only those people who can read a certain language,” sums up Donald DePalma, Chief Research Officer at CSA Research. He adds that providing a great experience for global customers should be a priority for companies around the world.

If people don’t feel supported and understood in their language, companies are unlikely to achieve the success they are seeking. That’s why there’s nothing better than having language allies that can rise to the occasion.