Welcome to London, one of the most diverse cities on the planet! According to the BBC, more than 300 languages are spoken in the city, ranging from Panjabi and Yorubu to French and Vietnamese.
This array of language skills is just one of the many reasons that, despite Brexit, London remains one of the top locations in the world for international and multilingual services. The city also boasts a deep talent pool of skilled professionals, with more than 6 million well-qualified people of working age. All this, plus the city’s cost base, make it an obvious choice for one of Comdata’s nine multilingual hubs.
So let’s give you a quick tour of what makes London special, what services and support we offer here, and why some of the world’s top brands are using them.
NOT JUST A MULTILINGUAL HUB, BUT A MULTICULTURAL ONE
At Comdata we know the importance of having customer service teams that understand the markets they serve. Consumers in different countries and regions have diverse ways of thinking and behaving, even when they speak the same language. The UK is a great illustration of that, with significant differences not only between the four nations it comprises, but even within their regions.
The diversity of London means we have easy access to people who not just speak different languages but connect with a variety of cultures. We can quickly and efficiently hire, train, and place staff according to our clients’ needs, serving different time zones and campaigns across a broad range of markets.
On top of that, our customer care advisers in London are specifically trained to understand and embrace these variations in local language, behaviors, cultural sensitivities, and demographics. It’s a key part of how we create a brand’s connection with its customers and ensure that every individual receives the experience and solution they want.
WORKING WITH A GLOBAL RETAIL BRAND ACROSS 9 MARKETS
Among our clients is one of the best-known retail companies in the world, serving a diverse customer base spread across the globe. Comdata’s London hub supports the brand’s customer service delivery in some of its key markets including the UK, USA, Canada, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, and South Africa.
Our core work is to provide telephony-based customer support. Beginning with five dedicated advisers, we grew to a team of 43 over just a few months. Working across multiple time zones, we provide customer service for over 12 hours a day.
In addition to the call service, we provide chatbot and outbound customer contact work in the UK and US, and have taken on the brand’s entire customer care operation in the latter. With both markets, we tailor our approach to suit local consumers.
In the UK, we have also extended our remit to take on processing payments from customers. We have delivered a range of ad hoc value-added projects too – including translation work – and we will soon add more markets, such as Switzerland, to our overall service.
Outcomes from this work, in collaboration with the brand, include its customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores increasing from 60% to over 90%, and its TrustPilot rating for the UK rising from 3.6 to 4.2.
SERVING EUROPE FROM LONDON FOR CENTER PARCS
Centre Parcs Europe is another company that outsources its customer service to our London multilingual hub – even though none of its sites is in the UK! We provide 100 customer service advisers covering the three main languages required in its core markets: French, German, and Dutch.
Comdata handles all communication with Centre Parcs’ customers up to the point where they arrive on-site, completing bookings and answering any queries they have about their visit, whether it is car parking or food options. Our interactive voice response (IVR) system ensures they are put in touch with an adviser who speaks the right language and is best placed to meet their requirements, making the experience as seamless as possible.
We handle a pre-agreed number of calls based on forecasts, which can be increased or decreased according to the client’s needs. We operate to a range of KPIs including sales numbers, conversion rates, upselling and cross-selling, as well as a mix of quality targets to ensure advisers are delivering.
SCALABILITY IS A KEY PART OF THE LONDON OFFER
One major benefit of London’s deep multilingual talent pool is scalability. If we need to hire new advisers for any language, we know we’ll be able to find them quickly. Both brands above have made use of this.
During December 2020, our global retail brand experienced a surge in customer enquiries during the holiday season – before our core work with them had even begun. Our London team reacted to the situation quickly and trained agents within two weeks of the initial increase, supporting the client through that spike in the already-busy Christmas period.
For Centre Parcs, the pandemic inevitably necessitated a level of crisis of management, including entire shutdowns and frequent local lockdowns in Germany. We adapted our London team to its needs – increasing the number of advisers from 40 to 70 in just a few weeks – and delivered technology solutions to communicate with customers as circumstances changed across its markets.
A CITY OF INNOVATION AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
London has always been associated with innovation – in fashion, music, design, technology and more. So, it’s natural to expect we would offer a range of new tech solutions to our clients here. And of course we do!
For example, to enhance some clients’ customer service offering, we’ve implemented TechSee, a visual support tool that allows our advisers to remotely diagnose a problem using the camera in a customer’s phone. This has significantly reduced the amount of time required to resolve enquiries.
We are also exploring the use of DigiDesk, a platform that helps companies to monitor their TrustPilot reviews and interact with customers to enhance their brand experience.
THE BUREAU: AGILITY FOR FAST-GROWING COMPANIES
Another innovation delivered in London is Comdata’s new flexible, digital, multilingual Bureau service, designed to support fast-growing companies with their changing customer service needs. Outsourcing customer care is most often associated with large organisations, but the new service demonstrates why it can work for any type of business, regardless of their size.
Delivered on a cost-per-contact basis for businesses of all sizes and requirements, the service offers companies 24/7 voice and digital customer service support 365 days per year. Customer service advisers in the Bureau are trained to work on multiple brands and campaigns at any one time, providing high-quality, cost-effective customer support across a variety of communications channels.
The service can help companies of all sizes with a range of growth scenarios – whether they are outsourcing for the first time and do not know what to expect in terms of contact volumes, testing new campaigns or launching products and services in new markets, or embarking on any other activity where flexibility and agility would be helpful.
Contact us to find out more
So, that’s a brief introduction to our multilingual hub in London, but there’s plenty more we could tell you. If you want to know how our London team, or other multilingual hubs, could support your customer management needs and help you up your game for 2022, please get in touch:
CEO UK
