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Businesses
Speaking your customer's language
Clear communication with customers is at the heart of every successful, growing business. Poor communication means that you may lose business, offend clients and waste time and money.
Follow our advice to improve your communications - and grow your business - with clients who speak foreign languages and come from different cultural backgrounds:
- Know your customers. Identify the foreign languages and cultural background of your main markets and clients.
- Know your team by finding out about the foreign language abilities and cultural knowledge of your staff. Map them against the needs of your main customers. Where are the gaps?
- Recruit people with the language skills you need into other roles in your business, e.g. in marketing, web development, finance and customer service.
- Use clear, jargon-free English in your communications with people who speak English as a second language.
- Improve and make use of the language skills of your team by supporting language training.
- Encourage your team to develop and share their knowledge of other cultures and countries.
- Work with professional interpreters for face-to-face meetings, interviews, trade fairs, conferences – and even on the phone.
- Translate important product information, notices, menus and health and safety advice etc.
- Translate your website – or key parts of it – so that it is an effective gateway for all your main clients and markets.
- Adapt – or localise – promotional literature, packaging and marketing communications to each market.
For specialist advice tailored for your business choose:
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