International Customer Service: 4 Challenges and Solutions

Challenge 1: Cultural Differences

One of the biggest challenges in international customer service is dealing with diverse cultures. People from different countries have different expectations of customer service. This ranges from opening hours to channels and courtesy standards. French customers take long breaks and work late. German customers strongly value politeness and courtesy. Dutch customers like to chat. You cannot, as a Dutch company with Dutch customer service, make the assumption that you can use the same form of customer service abroad. We have written blogs on, for example, the differences between with German and French customer service.

Solution?

Delve deeply into cultural differences. Look at your target audience and what their lives are like. See what other similar customer service organisations are doing in that country. You want to tailor customer service to your customers' needs, therefore you need to know the needs. Once you have started, you need to take stock of whether you are actually meeting the need. Maybe in France you need to be available until 10pm instead of 8pm and maybe in Germany you need to be available from 8am instead of 9am. Take stock of the needs and try to adapt to them as much as possible. Read the biggest differences between Dutch and French or German customer service

Challenge 2: Language and language use

Multilingualism is a big challenge in international customer service. It seems so easy, we take our webshop to Germany, we translate the website and we're good to go. We just need someone to deal with those German customer queries... Then things go wrong. It gets busier, German employees are hard to find and customer service is not optimal. This directly undermines your chances of international success. After all, poor customer service is a constraint to growth and especially as a start-up in another country.

Solution?

Multilingual customer service, if you don't already have it set up, is probably the biggest challenge for international business. The language level needs to be high, native or near native. You just don't want to deal with your French customers in poor French. It won't work. So make sure your people have a really good command of the language. Furthermore, the rule for customer service is 1=no. 1 employee who speaks the language does not work. Even if this employee goes to the toilet, you are unreachable. Let alone in case of illness or holidays. Many companies struggling with this problem opt for outsourcing. In addition, an external agency provides support in the languages you cannot directly speak yourself. Because they always have several people speaking the languages, you don't run the risk of being unreachable. You don't have to recruit and still have international customer service. Read here the main advantages of outsourcing

Challenge 3: Laws and regulations

Each country has its own laws and regulations regarding consumer protection, privacy and other aspects that can affect customer service processes. In Germany, they are enormously strict when it comes to personal data protection. You have to take that into account.

Solution?

Conduct thorough research on local laws and regulations in the countries in which the company operates. Adjust customer service processes to comply with these regulations and ensure staff are well informed about local laws.

Challenge 4: International phone numbers.

You can easily register a .be or a .de domain. You can also easily translate a website. None of this is such a big problem. When customers call customer service, they prefer to call a local number. We also find it strange to call a German phone number when contacting what we think is a Dutch webshop. An international phone number used to be easy to register from another country. Nowadays you can't do that without actually having a branch in that specific country.

Solution?

Be aware that having the right phone number really makes a difference and that you won't improve your chances of success if you just put your Dutch number on your foreign website. That is counterproductive. There are parties that sell international numbers and then switch through to a Dutch number.

In short:

Besides these 4 challenges, we could list 15 more but then this blog would be a lot less fun to read. International customer service has some serious challenges. The better you delve into the topics, the greater your chances of success. Seek help from parties with expertise in the specific areas and try to do it right from the start. The outsource of international customer service is additionally an attractive option. An external agency has already tackled all the challenges (as well as those other 15 :P) and can completely unburden you in terms of customer service.