Communication problems can frustrate your customers … and your employees … and eventually your results.
Getting business “right” depends on a key foundation: communication.
That is a business problem – not a person’s problem – at root.
Effective, efficient communication can’t happen when there are differences in language and understanding.
One would think in the age of automatic translation capabilities, emphasis on assimilating new hires into organizational culture along with training and development, etc. that communication issues would be mostly gone.
Not so.
Here’s an example:
We recently had a credit card stolen and notified the issuer – one of the BIG ones.
We went online and flagged fraudulent transactions that began showing up immediately. We then had two calls with the card fraud department to sort out the valid charges from fraudulent ones.
Then, more than a week later, I got a call from the fraud department wanting more information.
I had different language options (good for customers) and chose English for the call.
The resulting conversation was, in a word, difficult … I should also add irritating.
The card representative could not communicate well enough in English to get the call done, much less well.
A call that should have been 5 or less minutes in duration, took about 25. I still wasn’t sure everything is correct.
This was NOT a specific person problem from a root cause view.
This WAS a company problem.
A problem someone not matching the person to the task. A problem with hiring and selection … with training and development … with performance evaluation … and the rest of the “people cycle.”
There are at least 3 takeaways for your business illustrated by this situation:
First, make sure the language skills are adequate for the task.
Different tasks require different levels of language comprehension.
On this call, the representative couldn’t handle a basic conversation in the selected language.
For instance, even dates were hard to get right. The representative could not understand dates in a format like “March fifth.” I switched to saying with a number like “March five” … and that only sort of worked. Took multiple times to get ONE date right. And there were many to go through.
Add in the representative had a very strong accent difficult for me to understand … as probably mine was to her.
It would have been comical if it wasn’t about lots of money.
Same thing happened with numbers like charge amounts.
I resorted to “spelling” out the numbers like “one two three” rather than “one hundred and twenty three.” Decimal points were almost impossible to get across. Changing to using the terms “dollars” and “cents” didn’t help much.
It took much trial and error with lots of different phrasing to get basic facts sort of straight.
This representative’s language skill was inadequate for even basic bank teller transactions … much less fraud investigations.
Second, make sure thinking skills are adequate for the task.
Thinking skills underlie communication skills.
In the case example, I was working with one of the big credit card issuers about a stolen card.
One of representatives couldn’t converse in the language offered by the business, so even dates and numbers were a challenge.
It got worse.
The representative apparently was focused on one task … find a date after which all transactions were fraudulent.
There were some major problems with this, common to any credit card loss or fraud:
- Some of the charges on the old card were valid on/after the fraudulent transactions. These charges were being lumped into the fraud category only by virtue of being after the actual fraudulent charges.
- New cards had been issued, and there are new valid charges against the new cards. These charges were also being lumped into the fraud category only by virtue of being after the actual fraudulent charges.
Based on those problems, there was no way to set an arbitrary date after which all transactions were fraudulent.
I tried multiple times and multiple ways to describe and illustrate the problems … and why just “a date” wouldn’t work.
Once we got past the basic language comprehension barriers, there was still a logic/thinking problem. The representative did not understand the issue and stuck to the “single date” task.
Only by being insistent was I was finally able to get agreement to go through charges and flag valid/fraud one by one.
The level of understanding and thinking required to deal with this situation was higher than just getting a “date” for the file.
There are several cause possibilities:
- The business provided a script that failed to account for the common situation above.
- The business did not allow deviations from the script to accommodate situations outside the basic script.
- The business did not screen for ability to go “off script” even if allowed.
It is wishful thinking that all situations can be covered by customer service scripts. Customer service (and other roles) need appropriate language and thinking skills to handle the “off script” situations successfully.
Third … and deepest/biggest on the “iceberg” of effects … there are broader aspects to address and work in a cross-cultural environment.
Things like vision, employee growth, and trust are fundamental to employee engagement. And customer satisfaction in turn.
And all depend on effective communication.
There is more than mere “word translation” at play when there are language gaps.
Translating words into another language is a starting foundation. Understanding the meaning of the word is next. Understanding words together – along with any idioms – is the next level above that. Fitting all that “translation” into a particular business context is even higher up.
These kinds of communication issues are also culture issues. They are not just due to someone being from another country. Different subcultures within a country can create similar issues.
Different educational backgrounds, different life experiences … many things can create different “languages” and understandings that are a barrier to communication.
And that’s all before we even consider the ladder of inference 😉
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