3 Reasons to Hire Customer Service Agents for Expertise, Not Language

雇用客服代理的3个理由是专业知识,而不是语言

2021-03-31 13:00 unbabel

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Companies often make a tactical mistake when they’re trying to eliminate the language barrier in customer service: they hire agents for language first. This approach can be incredibly cost-prohibitive, especially if the customer base is relatively small and agents are only fielding a few queries a day. But, it also creates a different kind of hurdle to overcome and can turn customers off for good. When customers contact a company, they want their issues resolved on the first try. They don’t want to have to escalate their concerns – and research shows that 67 percent of customer churn can be avoided if representatives resolve the issue right away. For example, a company might gain a following in Italy, so they’ll hire Italian-speaking customer service agents to handle every ticket in that language. If these agents aren’t deep subject-matter experts, they’re often forced to escalate the ticket to get the customer’s issue resolved. If you’re thinking about hiring more representatives purely for their language skills, consider hiring for expertise instead and using a language operations solution to remove the language barrier. Here are three scenarios where this approach can save you money and improve your customers’ experience. You have a lot of different product lines If you sell products across 13 different vertical areas and distribute them in over 100 countries, it can be extremely expensive to hire customer service representatives who specialize in each language. As was the case with Logitech, generalist support agents may not have the expertise needed to answer questions or fulfill complex inquiries. What’s more, training them on the full product line would take too much time and not allow the agents to specialize in any one product line. If you use an AI-powered language operations solution, you can instead hire representatives who are knowledgeable about specific verticals or products and assign them to these queries. They’ll know how to resolve difficult issues or answer complex requests –and often on the first engagement with customers. For Logitech, using a language operations solution decreased escalations dramatically, cut hiring times, and even allowed them to scale to meet the demand for home office equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic. You serve many low-volume languages It can be hard to justify hiring even one full-time customer service agent for a specific region or language if the demand isn’t there. When request volumes are low, companies may forgo having a representative who can serve that market and miss opportunities as a result. Or they might use a free translation solution that isn’t always accurate, meaning that the customer gets increasingly frustrated or won’t have their issue resolved. For example, TuneCore used to have representatives on staff to support five languages. But when queries came in outside these languages, they’d have to either use a solution like Google Translate or see if anyone in the organization was a native speaker. This meant support tickets could take weeks to resolve, or translations were inaccurate. But with a combination of AI and human editors to accurately translate text, TuneCore could leverage experts to handle queries in a timely fashion. They instead restructured their support department to hire agents who were knowledgeable about the music industry and its complex structure, enabling them to better serve the independent musicians who make up their customers. Your customers require technical expertise In the gaming industry, customers are scattered around the globe – and use gaming-specific terms. If customer service representatives don’t know the lingo, they risk turning off gamers and losing credibility. While some of the terms are the same across languages, others are region-specific, like slang or abbreviations. Finding the right support agent in just one language can be difficult, and using generic translation software means you might mistranslate an essential part of the support ticket. For example, AI helped Wargaming handle a massive influx of customers in Asia. Japanese and Korean are among the hardest for North American and European translators to handle due to cultural nuances, sentence structure, and the different characters. But using a combination of human and machine translation made it possible for Wargaming to handle the surge and maintain fast support times – without having to rely on native language skills. Beyond gaming alone, there are many industries where technical know-how drives a positive customer experience.One of the best ways to keep your customers happy is to resolve their queries on the first try. By hiring agents for expertise, then leveraging an AI-powered language operations solution like Unbabel, you don’t have to worry about a language barrier preventing you from providing outstanding customer service.
当公司试图消除客户服务中的语言障碍时,他们经常犯一个策略性错误:他们首先雇佣语言代理。这种方法的成本可能非常高,特别是当客户基础相对较小,代理每天只处理几个查询时。但是,它也创造了另一种需要克服的障碍,可能会让顾客永远不喜欢。 当客户与一家公司联系时,他们希望他们的问题在第一次尝试中得到解决。他们不想把他们的担忧升级--研究表明,如果代表们马上解决问题,67%的客户流失是可以避免的。 例如,一家公司可能会在意大利获得一批追随者,因此他们会雇佣说意大利语的客户服务代理来处理每一张用该语言发出的票。如果这些代理不是深入的主题专家,他们通常会被迫将问题升级以解决客户的问题。 如果你想雇佣更多的代表纯粹是为了他们的语言技能,那么可以考虑雇佣专业人员,使用语言操作解决方案来消除语言障碍。以下是三种情况,在这些情况下,这种方法可以节省您的资金,并提高您的客户体验。 你们有很多不同的产品线 如果你在13个不同的垂直领域销售产品,并在100多个国家进行分销,那么雇佣精通每种语言的客户服务代表可能会非常昂贵。与罗技公司的情况一样,多面手支持代理可能不具备回答问题或完成复杂查询所需的专业知识。更重要的是,在整个产品线上培训他们会花费太多的时间,而且不允许代理商专攻任何一个产品线。 如果你使用AI驱动的语言操作解决方案,你可以转而雇佣对特定垂直领域或产品有知识的代表,并将他们分配给这些查询。他们会知道如何解决困难的问题或回答复杂的要求--而且通常是在第一次与客户接触时。对罗技来说,使用语言操作解决方案大大减少了升级,缩短了招聘时间,甚至允许他们在COVID-19大流行期间扩大规模以满足家庭办公设备的需求。 您提供许多低容量语言 如果不存在需求,就很难为某个特定地区或语言雇佣一名全职客户服务代理。当请求量较低时,公司可能会放弃为该市场提供服务的代表,从而错失机会。或者他们可能使用的是不总是准确的免费翻译解决方案,这意味着客户会越来越沮丧,或者他们的问题得不到解决。 例如,TuneCore过去在员工中有代表支持五种语言。但是当查询来自这些语言以外的地方时,他们必须要么使用谷歌翻译之类的解决方案,要么查看组织中是否有人是母语人士。这意味着支持票可能需要数周时间才能解决,或者翻译不准确。但通过人工智能和人工编辑的结合来准确翻译文本,TuneCore可以利用专家及时处理查询。相反,他们重组了他们的支持部门,雇佣那些对音乐产业及其复杂结构很了解的经纪人,使他们能够更好地为构成他们客户的独立音乐人服务。 您的客户需要技术专长 在游戏行业,客户分散在全球各地--并且使用特定于游戏的术语。如果客服代表不知道这些行话,他们就会冒着拒绝玩家和失去信誉的风险。虽然有些术语在不同语言之间是相同的,但其他术语则是特定于地区的,如俚语或缩写。仅用一种语言找到合适的支持代理可能很困难,而使用通用翻译软件意味着您可能会错误地翻译支持单的一个重要部分。 例如,AI帮助Wargaming处理了亚洲大量涌入的客户。日语和韩语是北美和欧洲译者最难处理的语言之一,因为文化差异,句子结构和不同的字符。但是使用人类和机器翻译的结合使得战争游戏有可能处理激增和维持快速支持时间--而不必依赖于母语技能。除了游戏之外,还有许多行业的技术诀窍能为客户带来积极的体验。让客户满意的最好方法之一就是在第一次尝试时就解决他们的疑问。通过聘请专业代理,然后利用像Unbabel这样的人工智能语言运营解决方案,您不必担心语言障碍会阻碍您提供出色的客户服务。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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