Translations and customer support

think global - answer english?

[heini]

Over 95 percent of leading Internet companies are unable to correspond in any language but English [news.zdnet.co.uk]
Given that English is first language to less than 50% of online population, with 33.33% for European languages, this is a surprising finding.
As stated in a discussion on the benefits and possibilities of translations even for small and medium sized sites in http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum18/265.htm [webmasterworld.com] one of the problems of going global is communicating with prospects and customers.
Amazingly even of the top50 websites only some 4,45% are able to support customers at least with some other languages than English - a serious obstacle to fully capitalize on global internet presence.
I found that astonishing - shouldn´t it be easy to hire someone locally in a pay-per-sales/lead like contract to support communication between customer and company?
Having translated your sites how do you deal with e-mails and customer support? Any experiences?

[markd]

It's a very good point Heini, and hopefully illustrates that the internet/web should be regarded as a 'strategic tool' rather than an 'add on' which can be launched and forgotten.

If a site 'works', and recieves a good response from locations other than your mother tongue country, supporting and servicing enquiries should be considered before you launch the site as a strategic issue for the company.

I don't think it's as easy for the serious company as 'hiring locally in a pay-per-sales/lead'.

Obviously, its depends on the industry/market in question, but you have the same issues of loss of control for the company in doing this (particularly if they view EU/overseas expansion seriously), relying on 'contract' people and in a nutshell finding 'the right people' for the job.

I have a client involved in a complex science field, who have time pressured, multi-lingual staff, and are seriously considering if they should launch a French and German presence due to the predicted success of the venture.

To do things right, they are considering opening a small office in France just to handle the demand they have identified in this country.

At last it seems that the web is being integrated into strategic thinking.

[heini]

>considering opening a small office
If were are talking medium to big biz this will be the preferable option.
But the amazing thing about doing business over the web is the chance for small companies to compete with the big guys, even on a global scale. Remember the success story rencke provided here? [webmasterworld.com]
Now how can the small site work around it?
For a starting point it might be a good idea to answer as many questions as possible before they even arise. Preparing an exhaustive FAQ sheet could for a translated site be of extra importance. What about preparing a set of standard e-mails also?

[Rumbas]

Interesting discussion.

I think there are several ways or steps to take when considering entering into other countries. First you have to identify your potential market. Are people actually looking for the kind of product or service your selling in that country? On one or more occasions I have experienced that products with heavy inernational demand could be zero to none-exsisting on local markets.

Presuming that a company already have these things down, and good approach would be to provide information in the particular language (FAQ's, product info, testimonial etc.) and asking the visitor to use english when contacting you.
This would not be the solution in the long run, but a good indicator of the interest form that particular country. If demand is good, considering receiving correspondance in the specific language could be the next step. Maybe by starting getting the requests translated and having translated templates ready for answering costumers.
I've seen this work out ok in smaller business situations.

If the type of product is complex or hard to sell off the shelf, local help should be considered.

IMO it all comes down to cost-effectiveness. Is the profit margin large engough to cover a dedicated employee? Often large coporations already have people in-house covering these markets and correspondance - the smaller company has not.

[caine]

An interesting read.

europe is the one area for the business that i represent, that i want to seriously get involved in. I'm starting the English version next week, and once built then i will be looking to europe and getting the site translated into German, Spanish and French, which will cover a good area of Europe langauge wise.

But drawing on the companies setup, small business and extremely technical equipment, hence outside of direct inquiries for products, questions go into high level language use, and translators that i have found don't do the job, but template answers, may be a solution. Product info has to be provided due to the nature of the services and products, so no problems their.

But what about when the site, inspires a phone call ? (silly question - but company has a global marketplace)

[heini]

Caine
with an high-tech related site you are probably least likely to face language problems. People in this area are used to read and communicate in English. If anybody should try to call you he knows by the number he´s going to have to speak English.

>German, Spanish and French
Did you consider Italian?
Top European online languages:
Spanish 34.6 M (only because of Latinamerica)
German 34.2 M
Italian 19.5 M

[backus]

Form some sort of partnership with companies in the country. For example, if you have your website translated into Czech, then form some sort of cooperation with a Czech company. That way, when you receive an email in Czech, you can ask them to deal with it. The company would rarely ask for money, because they might ask something of you in the future. That's the way I would handle it anyway.