The Idea of Multi-lingual Call Centre

When I think of call centre operating multilingual projects in different languages, first thing which comes to my mind is British Airways (BAe) and their first, successfully implemented, project of global call centre (the 80’s and 90’s of the 20th century).

The idea was based on two facts:

• because of time zones, it is always between 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM somewhere, with the substantial role of the trade unions,
• because of Great Britain’s colonial past, you can always find place where people speak English as fluently as natives.

Once decided, call centres servicing BAe were established in Great Britain, Asia, Australia and the United States of America. People contacting BAe call centres did not always realize that they were communicating with people operating in different time zones. The satisfaction of the clients was exceptional. Additional bonus was the fact that the consultants were actually offered regular working hours, which in this business was exceptional as well. From the years perspective we may deem BAe the offshore forerunner as they were the first company to move its projects abroad and to different time zones.

Since Europe is multilingual, nearshoring seems to be the answer. Nearshoring means to move projects to neighbour countries, mainly to improve cost efficiency. French companies are the forerunners in that field. Due to France’s colonial history, the projects are moved mainly to North Africa. In this case projects are outsourced to countries where the command of language is on native-level and the costs are lower than in the country from which the project originates.

Experience proves that language barrier is the only barrier for outsourcing of projects. The following inbound projects are successfully outsourced:

• info lines – global support of products and services within global or regional customer service, general level of information,
• order and support centres, help desk – airlines tending to consolidate customer service (booking and sale of flights) are the leaders as well as software houses (support) or complaint centres (usually FMCG sector),
• e-commerce support in all communication channels, except for telephone communication, is now electronic, it handles complaints published in social media and considers complaints

as well as the following outbound ones:

• telesales / acceptance of orders – extremely popular with direct sale companies and teleshopping,
• generating of leads – surveys of products and services (recruitment of patients for clinical tests is a new thing),
• customer surveys – the branches vary from FMCG or producers of tires to software houses and financial advisors.

From the client’s perspective, only global companies are able to handle outsourcing of such projects on satisfactory level, preferably with numerous worldwide branches. Such companies may quickly launch the project having consultants with almost native command of language at hand. Such consultants, if properly trained, guarantee high quality of communication with customers. Solid technological background seems to be an advantage if your communication with the client through different channels is to be consistent. Both quality and agility are the success factors.

Such companies are recognized and appreciated worldwide. In July 2017 the company attended Call Centre Awards in London and received two prestigious prizes:

• Golden Award for the Best Outbound Campaign
• Silver Award for the Best Outsourcing Partner.

Mellon