Our Analysts' Insights

In the past two years, most organizations interacting with CSA Research have undertaken some form of global digital transformation – whether it’s reimagining the entire company from top to bottom, or a narrow focus on re-vamping particular phases of the customer journey. One of our findings is the lack of attention paid to post-sales support content as an essential component for brand building, customer retention, and up-selling potential in international markets. We find firms guilty of this oversight no matter their vertical, size, or level of digital savviness.

How can you help your company or your client to get its act together in this area? Our research indicates four areas to address to get you started: 

• Try mystery shopping in local markets. Partner with local staff, marketing agencies, or language service providers to snoop around your current knowledge bases (KBs) and user communities outside the home market. Are they accessible in preferred languages? Can your shoppers find the information they’re looking for or access help quickly? How does their experience compare with that of your main domestic audience? You can also engage CSA Research to benchmark your support site versus those of your competitors to confirm breadth and depth for locale coverage.


• Recognize that post-sales support content deserves a strategy. Why? Because it’s an essential component of the global customer experience. CSA Research has uncovered that many people responsible for localization at their organizations have no idea what is happening with multilingual versions of their support content – if anything. This applies to new companies that only support mobile apps as well as to huge, more experienced firms with widespread global operations.


• Integrate international support into current digital transformation initiatives. When 74% of respondents in a 10-nation survey stated that they prefer products with customer care in their own language, that was a higher number than any other part of the customer journey. Your firm can’t afford to neglect post-sales content and its role in digital transformation.
   
• Describe the benefits of multilingual support content in terms of brand-building. Customers now control when, where, and how they engage with your firm, so each one of their KB interactions either increases or decreases the value of your brand in their eyes. Reactive problem solving is no longer enough when it comes to this area of the customer life cycle; rather, your focus should be on proactive loyalty building. Knowledge bases are an important part of their journey with you, and a big reason why they will stay with you. 

Visitors arrive at your knowledge base from somewhere else – perhaps while trying to use your product on a mobile phone, on Alexa in their kitchen, or on Android Auto while stuck in traffic. And, they will go on to somewhere else afterwards – whether to continue using your product or service if they have a rewarding experience, to work with a human agent to resolve their issue, or to a social media site to complain if they are less than satisfied. In addition to being a positive support interaction, make sure their KB visit connects to rest of the brand experience, especially the one they were having before they sought help.