Do you recall the urban legend of the infamous Chevrolet Nova? Legend has it that the sales of the Chevy Nova tanked in Spanish-speaking regions due to the lack of a better name- where “no va” literally translates to “no go.”
A car that’s supposed to take me places, called “no go?” It’s a “no” from me.
While it was a myth, it taught businesses an important lesson about preparing well before entering international markets.
Effective communication is the heart of international business strategy. Global forces are bringing cultures into collision, according to the AMS WMC (Academy of Marketing Science World Marketing Congress). Reaching culturally and geographically distant customers and ensuring loyalty amongst them has become a great challenge as well. Especially in the age of ever-evolving and demanding customers.
A different approach to connect and engage with customers is required.
So, here’s our guide on engaging with global customers.
How to engage with global customers?
Reaching customers in different regions demands a new approach to understanding customer expectations. It’s not enough to just translate your message.
You have to think about
1. What platform your global customers are available on
2. Adapting your messaging per region
3. Ensuring the adapted message is in harmony with your brand
It's a collaborative effort.
According to the Customer Engagement Solutions Market forecast, the customer engagement market was valued at 13.78B USD in 2018 and will reach 27.45B USD by 2024- making the incorporation of CX tools vital when engaging with global customers.
Let’s talk about the 1st point.
Engaging in platforms your customers are available on
Marketing and customer service. What’s it all about?
It’s all about sending out the right message, at the right time, to the right people.
You could plan all of this out, but what’s the point if it’s on a platform your customers don’t use?
According to Android’s App Data from 2018:
- Facebook Messenger is popular mostly in the North Americas, Australia, and certain parts of Europe
- WhatsApp Messenger is popular mostly all around the world including, South America, Africa, and most of Europe
- WeChat is primarily used in China
- Viber is used in a small handful of Eastern European countries like Serbia, Ukraine, etc.,
- Line is only used in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan
Technology has a direct influence on customer behaviour. The ability to access information directly affects the buying habits of your customers. You have to ensure that there are no barriers to this access to information.
Therefore, you have to show that you’re visible on these apps, instead of forcing them to reach you on a platform they’re unfamiliar with. After all, it’s about their comfort and ease.
With Engati’s digital CX platform available across 14 channels, it’s possible to use one platform to reach customers from all around the world. You can deploy your chatbot across Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, and more.
Adapting your messaging per region
The role of a marketer is to keep customers engage to ensure their return to your brand.
Did you know that 75% of buyers choose products from a platform that allows them to speak in their native language?
It’s not enough to translate your messages, you have to transcreate, i.e., you have to recreate your messages to engage and reach your customer’s heart.
Customer service is what empowers customers to remain loyal to a brand, so it’s vital to provide this service in a way that feels effortless. Going back and forth with a translator requires effort.
Therefore, translation and localization have to become a key part of your customer service strategy. You must engage with customers in their language of choice before entering a new market. By using multilingual chatbots, this becomes simple. With over 50 languages to choose from, Engati makes it possible to reach your customers in their preferred language.
It also gives you the freedom to truly transcreate your messaging. Engati provides the ease of machine translation, but with a twist. We all know that the accuracy of machine-translated messages is far from accurate. So Engati allows you to play around and sprinkle in localized terms to truly adapt your multilingual bot’s messaging per region. Check out our blog on uploading language keys to learn how.
Being in harmony with your brand
Transcreating messages demands a lot of effort. When transcreating your messaging, you have to:
- Harmonize with cultural expectations
- Keep the tone and your brand identity intact
If you’re jumping between CX tools, things can easily get lost at sea, which is why it’s crucial to have a one-view of everything that’s going on. With a cloud-based solution like Engati, you and your agents have everything in one place. Your chatbot’s messaging is in one spot, along with your messaging for broadcast campaigns, and interactions between customers and your platform. With a one-view of everything, you can ensure seamlessness between platforms and between agents.
What are the challenges of global customer engagement?
These things take time, effort, and resources. You have to ensure your teams study global industry trends.
Platforms that might be hot in one region now, may not be hot in the next couple of years, so be mindful and pay attention.
Tips:
- Identify foreign marketing trends
- Understand behavioral activities of global customers
- Familiarize yourself with cultural and economic factors to obtain better engagement from customers
The bright side
The integration of AI with Cloud-based solutions is changing our approach towards engaging with global customers. Pegasystems claims that 67% of CX leaders that have embraced AI believe that it will not only make customer experience more efficient, but also build more meaningful relationships between customers and businesses. And with live chat software integration, your global customers will be in for a treat.
Go ahead, and engage with global customers in their language of choice. With 54 languages to choose from, it’s possible.
Try Engati's automation & live chat for free today.
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