Transcom is a multinational company with a major global presence and offices in 21 countries on five continents. We offer customer care, sales and technical assistance services in 33 languages. In Europe, we have several specialist multilingual hubs, including in Budapest, Gdansk, Olsztyn, Belgrade and Riga. Each and every day, our highly qualified customer experience professionals make every effort to create the best possible contact experience for users of every nationality. But to put customers at ease and make them feel that they are fully understood, language fluency is not enough on its own.
It is equally essential to be empathetic and able to interact using the most appropriate idioms and the most effective interpersonal approach, which depends exclusively on the cultural background in each individual country. To develop this knowledge and these skills, we can draw on Transcom's extensive global presence. We have therefore organized cross-country coaching sessions, inviting expert native speakers to teach multilingual hub teams about the cultural peculiarities of the countries in which users live, in such a way that their contact experience is an even more enjoyable one.
Last summer, for example, we organized a collaboration project between the Rostock (Germany) and Riga (Latvia) sites to help the Riga team improve the level of customer satisfaction. The contact center in Riga provides customer care services in many languages, including German, for an important European bank.
The German team in Riga has excellent language skills, but despite this, the customer satisfaction levels measured did not fully meet the standards set by the client. Transcom implemented a fast and effective solution: it was decided to send an expert team leader who is a native German speaker from Rostock to Riga to work alongside the German language team.
Sascha is the German team leader who flew to Riga to coach the Latvian team
An in-depth quality analysis was performed by listening to calls, revealing some areas for improvement in terms of the language conventions used by various operators during conversations with German customers.
The German team leader worked in close contact with his Latvian colleagues to fill these gaps. He trained the agents involved during special classroom workshops and worked alongside them one by one during calls. At the end of the coaching sessions, a list of “dos and don'ts” when dealing with German customers was prepared and shared with the entire team.
As a result of the coaching activities, the Latvian team gained greater sensitivity and awareness about certain cultural peculiarities typical of customers with a German background, e.g. finding the right balance between expressions of courtesy and active listening signals. The reasons for the call are now clearly summarized at the outset to avoid misunderstandings. In addition, effective phrases and formulations have been developed to manage more complex interactions that might evolve into an escalation.
The team leaders (on the left) and some of the operators who took part in the Riga coaching project
The collaboration between the Rostock and Riga sites will continue in the future. This brief cross-country coaching project has already brought huge benefits to all the subjects involved, and first and foremost to our customers. We work incessantly to improve our services and the customer experience we offer. Our huge global network of contact centers allows us to share knowledge and experiences that help our clients improve their business results.