How to localize digital customer service and online communities

For truly global companies, operating across multiple regions and supporting multiple languages can be extremely difficult and expensive. International brands have begun to harness global messaging channels like WhatsApp and regional channels like WeChat (popular mainly in Asia), but in order to staff and support them, contact center agents and community managers need tools that support their native languages.

Khoros serves a global audience, and a global audience has diverse needs. As international brands adopt global messaging channels, their contact center agents, software developers, and community managers will need tools that support their preferred languages as operators, and their customers’ languages of choice.

Just because your international employees speak your customers’ languages, doesn’t mean they’ll be most effective in interacting with software in those languages — especially in language dense regions in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Local contact center agents delivering service in German may still prefer operating their conversation management platform in English or referencing chatbot documentation in French.

Khoros proudly supports 31 languages in Khoros Care and a whopping 38 languages in Khoros Communities, for a combined total of 42 languages. Agents can customize their interface display language, which can have a massive impact on agent efficiency and satisfaction. It allows geographically distributed and culturally diverse teams to work in a single platform, regardless of their preferred language.

We all know the meaning or intent of words can get lost in translation, but so can customer satisfaction. Forcing customers to engage in languages they don’t prefer, or relying on translation engines to interact with them is a recipe for bad experiences that can impact brand loyalty and lifetime customer value. Building and staffing operations that support local languages is the first step, but the second critical step is layering automation for language detection and conversation routing.

Khoros Care offers AI-powered language detection and automation for tagging and routing so that conversations are always handled by the best agents and self-service resources. This cuts down on transfers, resolution time, and improves the overall customer experience.

When an international customer base interacts with your brand and each other in your online community, it can result in dozens of languages being represented on a single thread or forum. Khoros Communities offers built-in translation services for 38 languages, making it easy to drive engagements that add lifetime value and collaborations that improve your brand’s resources and documentation. For example, HP developed their online community using Khoros Communities in order to centralize its support knowledge base and give international customers and agents a place to quickly find answers — at any time and in dozens of languages.

Of course, offering customer service and resources in the right languages is just the beginning. Exceptional customer care also involves being attuned to local attitudes and preferences — and supporting differences in regional technology. It’s why Khoros Care also supports China’s favorite channel, WeChat, the globally popular WhatsApp, and other popular messaging channels. It’s also why we’re continuing to explore and add new region-specific channels. Khoros is committed to recognizing and supporting the local differences of all of our global brand partners, and we strive to build and support products that live up to that commitment.