Digitalisation has made it easier than ever to enter the global marketplace. Rather than immediately needing to set up shop in foreign markets, you can now cater to customers worldwide online and enjoy unprecedented access to global customers. When you step your business up from local to global, your brand is virtual for many of your new customers.

But going global comes with its share of challenges. An overreliance on tech sees the human touch lost in favour of automated emails, chatbots, self-service and other quick wins. These quick wins are not get-out-of-jail-free cards for neglecting to build human connections, and fail in the long term if they don’t help you build relationships with each online visitor. Maintaining the human touch in international service – from battling with language barriers to working around time zone differences – is no mean feat.

The human touch is the warm greeting you give to each customer. It’s the flexibility you show when you bend over backwards to help the customer, finding workarounds to tricky queries. It’s the personal touch that you put into your service.

We use emotion to work out whether we can trust a person or a business. Without trust, converting your online visitors is an uphill battle. Since 86% of customers confirm they’ll pay more for better service, it’s clear just how important the human touch can be in boosting your support efforts.

With struggles like this to contend with, how can you hope to offer consistently great service across continents? Used well, digitalisation may be able to help you with that, too.

1. Offer as many long-distance connection and communication options as possible

When you first scale up into the global marketplace, you may not have a physical store or office for your new customers to visit. You’ll rely solely on technology to digitalise your customer service and duplicate that coveted human touch.

While you might not be able to move in right away, you can establish a strong supporting presence on your website.

By making contact information detailed and easy to find, you demonstrate to customers that your business is open to them — even from the other side of the world.

The more channels you can offer for contacting you, the better.

Do more than just displaying a company address and telephone number. Have a social media account customers can reach out to, email addresses they can contact, comment sections on your site where relevant, and a live chat channel to demonstrate that you’re only a few clicks away from helping them out.

2. Overcome language barriers with online translation

While local businesses can be fairly confident that their customers and employees will be able to communicate in the same language, a global business has no such assurance. As you gain employees in new locations with local language capabilities this becomes less of an issue. But when you’re starting off you don’t always have this resource.

Language barriers can restrict the human touch in your service because customers won’t feel personally cared for if they cannot get support in their native language. Accommodating such differences is a personal touch that’s challenging when entering the global marketplace.

Using technology such as live chat software could help you with this. There are solutions that offer real-time chat translation, which lets your team speak in their own language, while customers speak in theirs.

You might also want to consider a multilingual or multi-regional website. A multilingual website offers content in more than one language, while a multi-regional site explicitly targets users in different countries. This helps you create a more fluent customer journey catered to each foreign market.

3. Difficulties caused by time zones

If language barriers weren’t causing enough of a headache, different time zones across the world complicate matters further. Your business is asleep while customers are awake and waiting on replies from your team. After all, support channels can’t help your team offer the human touch if no one is awake to answer.

Empower customers to help themselves. A staggering 90% of customers want to have a self-service option available.

A great way to provide awesome service, without fearing a lack of the human touch (it’s less expected), is by providing self-service options on your site.

You can also support your customers with a well-deployed chatbot. While chatbots can’t assist with every query, they can streamline self-service experiences by offering help navigating the site, or providing quick answers to simple questions. If trained to use your company’s tone of voice, chatbots can sprinkle cordial, consistent support into self-service options.

When it comes to technology, make sure you use it right

Ultimately, it’s important to remember when going global that people often want to deal with people. The technology you use should reflect this, by providing an interface for human support. When you use digitalisation to help you go global, it doesn’t mean engineering your employees out of your customer service.

Part of a great customer experience is meeting customers where they are. That doesn’t mean you need to get on a plane and visit your new global customers. The technology you use to connect with your customers can and must be used to bring the human touch of your team members to every global customer – be they next door or on the other side of the world.

The post 3 ways technology can help you keep the human touch in your global service appeared first on Trade Ready.

Before finalizing a partnership agreement, companies should discuss a communications plan. Basically, a business partner communications plan contains the following features:

• Objectives: What will communication achieve? Objectives might include team building, discussion of progress or collaboration on a project.
• Messages: What information will be communicated?
• Audience: Who will be communicated with? Will partners communicate solely through senior management or will all employees receive some or all partnership communications? Will the communications plan be solely internal to the partnership, or will information be passed to external parties, such as stakeholders?
• Schedule: When will communications take place? For example, a communications plan might schedule a regular progress update meeting once a month, with a partnership review annually.
• Method: What methods will be used for communication? These can include Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for real-time inventory and shipping communications, e-mail or regular mail for business communications, telephone or web conferences for meetings, and a website to post information for employees. Different methods should be used for different audiences. Companies should assess which methods will be most cost effective and timely for each message that must be communicated.

Plan how to share information to keep everyone informed

As well as a business partner communications plan, companies should agree on three other plans with their partners. These are a documentation plan, a shared information plan, and a reporting plan.

Documentation plans detail what documentation partners must prepare, what formats must be used, when and how it must be shared with partner companies and the length of time that documents must be stored. Companies might also include provisions for ensuring that documentation is stored securely off-site.

A shared information plan details what information must be shared between partners, and what information can be kept private. It also documents how often this information must be shared. For example, a supplier might request inventory information for a product to be supplied on a weekly basis, or they might request instant and continuous access to inventory level information.

A reporting plan documents how and when partners should report to each other. Reports will usually include information about marketing and sales, profit levels, expenditures, project progress, new market opportunities or quality targets.

Set up regular meetings to stay in touch and monitor progress

Regular interaction between partners is essential to monitor the progress of the partnership. Assigned communication team members from each partner company should meet regularly to consider obstacles and celebrate successes. Regular meetings also enable potential problems to be identified early enough to take remedial action. Group communications between partners also help to develop a team spirit.

The most cost-effective and efficient ways of conducting such meetings internationally are telephone conference calls. There are hundreds of companies that offer telephone conference services. With these, companies are given a phone number and a pass code to distribute to partners for a meeting scheduled at a certain time. An administrator code ensures that only an authorized team member can set up and host a call. Calls can be configured so that people dialling in can use a free phone number or a low-cost number.

When all partners have access to reliable, high-speed Internet, web conference services also provide an ideal meeting forum. Participants can use web cams so that partners can become more familiar with members of the partner companies, or can present information using PowerPoint, animated presentations or whiteboards. Again, there are hundreds of companies that provide low-cost web conferencing services. They are easy to use, although companies should always conduct a trial run before holding an important meeting.

Executives who are experienced in operating strategic alliances stress that there can never be too much communication. A failure in communication leads to backtracking and loss of enthusiasm. It also weakens the inherent synergy between the parties that is the rationale underlying the partnership.

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As a coach, I work with clients across the globe daily. We mostly meet virtually, by videoconference, phone and email. Many of my corporate clients, lead virtual teams and communicate through teleconference and videoconference as well.

Gallup reported in 2015 that 37% of American workers had telecommuted, and the percentage was increasing. According to Globalworkplaceanalytics.com:

• Fifty percent of the American workforce holds a job that is compatible with working virtually at least part of the time, and approximately 20-25% of the workforce telecommutes at some frequency.

• Fortune 1000 companies around the globe are revamping their spaces around the fact that employees are already mobile. Studies repeatedly show they are not at their desk 50-60% of the time.

Different media require different styles of communication

The tools we use to communicate influence the way we interact. For example, we tend to use short and abbreviated statements in text messages, while emails are more likely to be written in complete sentences, depending on our personal, corporate and cultural preferences.

Our cultural context also defines our communication style. Some people prefer to be more direct with their message, providing less context within a more informal writing style. Others prefer the opposite. They tend to be more indirect, with a desire for a lot of background information and a formal writing style.

Communication styles are also influenced by the organizational context. I recall my first few weeks as a junior staff member at the United Nations many years ago. I felt like an elephant in a glass house, as I was navigating and learning the diplomatic, formal and indirect communication style of my team.

Our emails were formal, starting with “Dear so and so,” followed by a long explanation and then a diplomatically worded proposal or request. Our team meetings were equally formal, as we all took turns speaking and no one interrupted the other. This was very different from the informal, almost chatty emails at my previous job.

Eventually, I did adjust and modified my communication style. Today, as I work globally and often virtually, I find I need to switch back and forth between different styles of communication several times a day.

Build better virtual connections with these useful tips

1. There’s more than one way to build trust

Successful client and colleague relationships are built upon trust. Cultures develop trust differently though, so you’ll need to adjust your strategies from one situation to another.

For example, some cultures focus more on what someone can accomplish within their area of expertise, while others prioritize the human relationship and who you are. It is therefore important to allow time and room for both perspectives as you interact virtually. You need to be aware of what your preference is and that of your client or team member.

If your client is from a culture that leans more towards the human relationship, e.g. Columbia, you’ll need to spend some time to get to know them. You could perhaps schedule a videoconference first, to create a closer connection. Talk about other matters than just the task at hand. A videoconference also allows for higher context communication, such as facial expressions and body language, which allows for a more intimate conversation even while working virtually.

If your team members are from low context and direct cultures with a task-based sense of trust, e.g. Germany, the Netherlands and Northern Europe, you can likely shorten the getting-to know-you stage and move to the task at hand sooner.

When you have a culturally diverse team to manage, you will need to use a blended approach of task and relationship-centered communication styles.

2. Proper speed and formality are key to productive emails and texting

Written communication can be quite the minefield as you work across cultures, as my own experience at the UN illustrates.

The North American style is generally informal; you address each other by first name, often with a hello, and go straight to the point rather quickly without much context.

Many Northern Europeans and the Dutch prefer to send rather formal emails, but without much “small talk” or personal information, and get to the point quickly.

Some more traditional and hierarchical cultures will prefer communication that is more formal, and places an importance on titles. For example, if you are communicating by email with a Japanese client, you need to pay attention to titles, such as san. You might also need to include a lot of detail in your message.

Make sure you research in advance how names are written and how you greet and address people. For example, in China you mention the family name first followed by the given name.

What should you do if you’re unsure? My advice is to start your interaction with a more formal communication style, like Dear…, followed by some introductory small talk before your get to the point. End with a formal sincerely or best regards, followed by your complete name. Pay attention to how your client of team member communicates with you and mirror their style.

Many millennials are used to brief text messaging in lieu of more formal emails. As they’ve entered the workforce, texting has become more common in the world of business as an easy and instant medium of communication.

Because of its brief and instant character, text messaging can easily cause cultural misunderstanding or confusion, especially if you are interacting or working virtually with someone more senior or from a more traditional culture. So use caution here, and again lean towards a more formal, explanatory style when in doubt.

Finally, how quickly you reply to a text or email message varies across cultures.

Americans tend to send brief and quick messages and expect an answer soon, within a few minutes or an hour. This is not the norm everywhere, so do not become impatient or read too much into a slower response time. One way to set expectations is to add a note to your email signature that informs the recipient of how soon you normally provide an answer.

Do you have any other tips, suggestions or stories? Let me know in the comments!

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