Customer Delight. Customer Retention.
High C-SAT scores. Zero Escalations.
Key metrics in green. Long appreciation emails from customers and clientele.
Irrespective of industry, these are goals that drive every support team within an organization. These are the goals that govern every training program, every refresher session, every quarterly review and team huddle.
All German-speaking support representatives go through all the same training steps as the English-speaking colleagues.
They receive the same amount of process training.
They know how to solve the problem at hand.
They know what to say to the customer/ client.
In English, sure.
But are they communicating in German with the same amount of conviction, professionalism and clarity?
German customers are culturally different in small but significant ways. Apart from these peculiarities, there’s a great deal of language-based adapting that German linguists have to do while interacting with them, both verbally and in writing.
Back when I was a linguist employed in the corporate world, I noticed that the German-speaking linguists struggled with this on many levels – right from not knowing the correct business term to not understanding the customer’s accent.
Based on my experience of leading a team of 20+ linguists, I discovered three key problem areas that impact the success of German-speaking teams:
– lack of a proper communication strategy in German
– lack of proficiency in Business German (which is not extensively covered in the standard certification courses)
– lack of awareness of business call and email etiquette in German
I realized that many of the misunderstandings, escalations, irate customer calls & emails and low C-SAT scores were rooted in these shortcomings.
I was also able to see first-hand, how a short but insightful session covering the three topics went a long way in improving the team’s success rate.
And that’s when I designed the Business German Masterclass.