Why localize: life-changing tips for globalizing your customer service funnel

Image credit: woodleywonderworks

The customer service sector is one of the few industries that overcomes cultural and social barriers. With the shared economy in full-force and B2B (business to business) services transcending borders, methods for handling consumers are fast evolving and online commerce is quickly moving away from sales and conversions and toward a satisfaction-centric framework.

Internationalization and localization have proven wildly successful for attracting customers by focusing homepages and payment funnels toward a global audience. Despite all of the work put toward internationalizing their main pages, brands have remained aloof to the potential of gaining and retaining users through implementing localized customer satisfaction funnels.

Here’s why your designers, copywriters and community managers should look beyond the main page and pay attention to localizing your brand’s customer service funnels.

To begin with

The look of your website has the power to both compel or repel your audience. A customer venturing into your ‘About’ or ‘FAQ’ page needs your assistance. Therefore, it is crucial that the process is clear and easy to understand for them.

Before you begin the building process it is essential to know what a standard ‘About’ and ‘FAQ’ page looks like in the country that you’re working on. It is the slightest details that can make the greatest difference in how your global customer base interacts with your site, making specified market research a benchmark to your UX’s success.

While there is no one best technique for conquering this process, one tried-and-true solution to finding the most compatible UX for your company’s customer service funnel is to start with your competitors.

Look at their layouts, play around with their chat systems and study their link copy. What confuses you and what do you love? When wire-framing, be sure to incorporate aspects of the “wow” features and find better solutions for the features that left you unsure or frustrated.

Heatmapping

Knowing your customer’s online behaviors, beyond just from the homepage to the cart, can allow you to understand what is being most searched and how easy it is for your user to access. Seeing where users are or aren’t clicking offers insight into how customers interact with your service pages and can shine light on what needs to be optimized.

Robust heatmapping platforms, such as Hot Jar, can be used to track and understand what your customer is doing on your site, where they’re getting stuck, and how you can better improve your customer service funnel so they won’t need to spend more than a few seconds hovering over ‘FAQ’ details.

When working with an international audience, this is a brilliant start, as it allows you actionable insight into the UX you are providing your customers. You can’t ask every customer how they experienced your site, and focus groups can be expensive and timely when working internationally. By having a clear dashboard with color coordinated analytics and feedback, however, you can use tactical analytics to alter your customer’s online experience accordingly.

Reference: Hot Jar

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Takeaways