I’m Irish, my husband is Italian, I have a Polish sister-in-law and two of my closest friends are English and American. I’ve worked in five different countries and holidayed in many more. My set-up is not unusual and increasingly we all need to know how to survive in a multi-cultural world.
This is much more than just speaking the language, it’s appreciating national differences, interpreting cultural nuance and, in the contact centre world, designing and delivering customer experiences that are appropriate for each nationality.
At gem we manage customer contacts with consumers from almost 30 countries and some of our experiences in designing multi-cultural customer experience include:
• Spanish consumers like to talk so make sure you plan for lots of time on the phone but Dutch consumers like “no nonsense, no frills” in their answers, get straight to the point;
• The Swedish language has no word for please and sometimes that means they can seem more blunt than they mean to be but they still like you to be empathetic about their problem
• The Dutch like you to be informal in your communications with them, the Germans formal
• The French like you to spend some time apologising for any inconvenience whereas Americans and Indians tend to want you to go directly to the point
However, above all, everyone (no matter what their nationality) wants to be treated like an individual. gem is an interesting place to work with almost 50% of our staff multi-lingual and over 95% of them native speakers. We thrive on diversity and delivering a multi-lingual, multi-cultural service which recognises and respects diversity.
Meanwhile, at home, my five year old daughter is demonstrating her own diversity and can say “Hola”, “Fantastico”, “Gracias”, “Me llamo Aisling” and “Vámonos”. She tells me she’s Spanish. Should I tell her that it takes more than speaking the language?
And sometimes it’s better to be female! In the business world, women still talk about glass ceilings, breaking into the board room and the impact of “boy’s clubs” but recently we had an experience in gem that broke the mould.
Jack works in one of our teams providing technical support for a leading international brand via e-mail. As with all our accounts, customer satisfaction is a key measure for everyone and Jack’s competitive. He likes being the best and delivering the best. He’s good at his job and couldn’t understand that while his quality scores were consistently good, he wasn’t scoring as highly as some of his (female) colleagues in our customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys. So he decided to conduct a test. He became Jill. For a period of time he signed all e-mails as Jill and saw an immediate increase in his CSAT.
While I see a number of ethical dilemmas with his approach, it does raise interesting questions about what influences customer satisfaction and the impact of non-tangibles when designing customer experience. Answering the customer’s question is important but attitude and approach – how we interact – also matter. We all like to be treated in a suitable manner and as individuals. Delivering a response, whether via e-mail, voice, chat or blogs, requires a tone and etiquette that meets the needs of different customers. Check out any of gem’s current vacancies to see how important we rate attitude in the recruitment criteria.
In Jack’s case, the tone (and signature) that worked best was a feminine one.
Jack was elated at his higher scores (immediately boasting to his female colleagues) and the improvement was quickly noticed by management (unfortunately for Jack the name change was picked up pretty quickly as well by our quality team). His team manager liked the increase in scores but wasn’t pleased with the name change. We made him go back to being Jack and we’re working with him to let his personality shine through in different ways. But we are also studying further the impact of gender on our quality scores.
We are pleased to announce that gem is a winner at the NICE Excellence Awards in the category of Technical Innovation.
The NICE Customer Excellence Awards program celebrates and honours organisations using NICE products and services to drive creative, inventive approaches to managing their operations and optimizing business performance. With a diverse range of solutions, including workforce management, quality management, interaction recording, customer feedback, performance management and interaction analytics
gem will be attending the NICE Customer Conference and will be giving a presentation on how gem’s innovative use of NICE enables us to represent our clients brand, build customer loyalty and deliver a superior customer experience.
According to a recent article in TTG Live, Michael Fausette (group vice-president of software business solutions for San Francisco-based market analysis company IDC) has warned of the dangers to your business of ignoring new media.
“These tools are extremely powerful. If you are not involved you won’t know what people are saying about and that can be extremely dangerous. People will no longer accept service on your terms; they are looking for real time response.”
Some of the recent examples of how Social Media can have an effect on your business include:
With the advances in mobile technology your customers can be tweeting from the check-in queue and rating your services as they are using them.
At gem we understand the importance of providing a “real time” customer support service and the need to tailor this service to the particular requirements of each of your customers.
gemis one of Europe’s leading independent providers of outsourced contact centre serviced across email, telephone, SMS, and live chat in 26 languages and providing a 24 x7 operation. We also tweet, blog and can be found on Facebook and LinkedIn. We understand the benefits of using Social Media. So do EA, Expedia and Match.com who are just three of our major international clients.
ants to be treated like an individual. gem is an interesting place to work with almost 50% of our staff multi-lingual and over 95% of them native speakers. We thrive on diversity and delivering a multi-lingual, multi-cultural service which recognises and respects diversity.
Jack works in one of our teams providing technical support for a leading international brand via e-mail. As with all our accounts, customer satisfaction is a key measure for everyone and Jack’s competitive. He likes being the best and delivering the best. He’s good at his job and couldn’t understand that while his quality scores were consistently good, he wasn’t scoring as highly as some of his (female) colleagues in our customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys. So he decided to conduct a test. He became Jill. For a period of time he signed all e-mails as Jill and saw an immediate increase in his CSAT.