subject: The Language Barrier In Call Center Work [print this page] The language that call center agents communicate in becomes a barrier at times. Its true that to curb this problem the BPO firms always set up units where there are enough English-speaking members of the population. However, there are some areas where the answering service managers have to be really careful. The business process industry is based on the fact that the callers are made to believe that they are talking to a person based in their own country. For this to be credible, the agent on the call has to know more than just the accent. That is where intensive training comes in. The agent needs to be briefed not just on the dialect and the diction. The agent must have a fair idea of the culture and practices among the target callers. There are many phone etiquettes that are acceptable in one culture but not in another.
Other than the language barrier in voice calls, call center agents have a tough time coping with the emails that potential customers leave. To answer those emails, your inbound call center team has to find out what sort of a written text would be most applicable. You cannot write a very erudite language to people who are looking to buy tech products. They would prefer a bare-to-the-skeleton language, with no frills attached. The BPO agent must be willing to use some vibrant use of words and ideas as well to make the interaction livelier. To be able to do, the agent must have a good command over the written language. Clearly, this is a specialized field and any sloppy work will immediately reflect on the brand image of the client company.
The biggest area of concern for a BPO is when it has been entrusted to build the clients website. The website is the face of the company online. It goes without saying that the content for a website has to be written with a lot of care and detail. The call center employee doing that would need to be very thorough. Spelling or syntax errors on the site will never be tolerated. Moreover, the writing has to follow the required standards of Web 2.0. It has to cater to the target readers so that they can get the required information without much of a hassle. The back office teams that will do the writing and the design have to be aware of the trends on modern Internet marketing. Keeping all of this in mind and cranking out killer content is no mean task. A language barrier here would spell sure doom for the project.
Just a working knowledge of English is not enough to run a successful BPO services firm. Then there are other foreign languages in the business as well. European clients are always looking for call center units well-versed in French and German. The business outsourcing work is all about catering to a large section of the population so as to make the deepest impact. To bring a method to this madness, better master the language before anything else!
