Contact Center Pipeline March 2025 | Page 8

HS : When someone reaches out to customer service , the support level must be at the same high caliber regardless of channel .

Consistent , omnichannel support aligns the brand experience and is more convenient for customers . If they start a chat online but realize they would rather discuss it over the phone , they shouldn ’ t have to restate all of the information and their needs to the next agent . Rather , those channels should be connected to ensure the most unified experience possible is provided for the customer .

WHICH DIRECTION ARE NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE PRIMARY / PREFERRED CUSTOMERS ' LANGUAGE USE GOING ?

DO CUSTOMERS WANT TO USE / INSIST THAT OR- GANIZATIONS ENGAGE WITH THEM IN THEIR PRI- MARY / PREFERRED LANGUAGE AND FOR WHICH LANGUAGES ? OR ARE CUSTOMERS INCREASINGLY RELUCTANT TO SPEAK LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH ?

RB : Customers are increasingly asking that customer service be delivered in their preferred language . Contact centers are better able to deliver on this demand because of the global nature of business and the ability of voice and text agents to work remotely from anywhere in the world , across time zones .

Technology allows us to connect customers with agents that speak the language , whether the agents are multilingual or single language , as well as identify the language and respond in the appropriate language through human or automated response .

Here are two important examples .

• Contact centers have done a good job of adding Spanish-language prompts and representatives based on demand for Spanish in the U . S . and Canada and are getting better at adding additional languages .

• Chinese continues to grow as the third most-spoken language in the U . S . and Canada . Many of these interactions can be facilitated by local agents that speak both English and Chinese or by agents in any country that are native Chinese speakers .

Agent make-up in U . S . and Canadian contact centers typically mirrors the population make-up of the areas that they are serving .

Centers in Quebec , for instance , will have a strong French-speaking agent count ( Ed . note , the province ’ s official language is French and there are powerful laws to support it ).

Meanwhile , centers that are focused on population areas in the southern parts of the U . S . will have a strong Hispanic-speaking proportion of agents .

A few years ago , I worked on the sale of a market research company that made outbound phone calls to consumers regarding certain well-known consumer packaged goods : think Tide detergent and Campbell ’ s soup . Their claim to fame was that they had a bilingual ( English and Spanish ) agent workforce .

When calls were made to heavily Hispanic-populated areas , such as El Paso , Tex . and Miami , Fla ., agents could easily switch languages if the consumers at the end of the phones were not proficient in English .

This company ’ s competitive advantage was , therefore , that they were able to gather 100 % of the opinions of the consumers that they were calling , while other vendors would simply hang up the call if the consumer was not able to communicate in English .

Multilingual proficiency a must

Given the fact that the U . S . is statistically home to over 350 languages ( U . S . Census Bureau ), it is in the interest of every contact center to have agents who are proficient in as many languages as possible .

However , it is far more difficult to manage agents who are 8proficient CONTACT only CENTER in one language PIPELINE , with the exception of English for obvious reasons . What we have seen is that agents will be hired if they have multilingual capabilities but who are unlikely to be hired if they are proficient only in one non-English language .

The increase in the Hispanic population in the U . S . has given rise to U . S . -based contact centers setting up operations or partnering with companies in nearshore areas . Countries like Mexico , Colombia , and Guatemala have all seen surges in their agent population .

However , not all countries in Latin America have benefitted from this trend . The largest country in Latin America , Brazil , is a Portuguese-speaking country . In Argentina , the second largest country in Latin America , the Spanish accent is uniquely Argentine and difficult for most Spanish-speaking people to understand .

What is evident is that the consumer these days expects to communicate in whatever fashion ( phone , SMS , email , chatbot , etc .) and in whatever language they prefer . This requirement is agnostic to the type of service ( inbound , outbound , order entry , debt collections , etc .) or industry .

Role of AI

There is no doubt that , in the near-term , artificial intelligence ( AI ) will provide contact centers with tremendous benefits in interacting with non-voice consumers in languages other than English .

The question then becomes , can AI replace a live agent who is not proficient in a particular foreign language ? The answer in the long-term is an unequivocal “ yes ” but clearly , we are not at that stage of AI ’ s evolution yet .

--Peter J . Hill , Managing Director , Brown Gibbons Lang & Company ( BGL ). He has extensive mergers and acquisitions and capital markets experience , with deep knowledge in the overall Business Services sector , including business process outsourcing , contact center services , facilities management , human capital management , and other related outsourced services .