Customer feedback is a powerful source of insight for your organization. Understanding your customers' impression of your brand, product or offering, and support can help your team prioritize to create highest impact. That's why it's critical that your feedback programs are representative of your entire customer base (no matter what language they speak).
Surveys, interviews and feedback sessions are all effective ways to gain insights into your customer's experiences. You may think your initiatives are comprehensive -- but are you missing a critical segment of your customer base?
If you're only conducting surveys and feedback sessions in English, then you're missing out on critical information to improve your business. That means you're not hearing from customers with limited-English proficiency (LEP), who make up about 21.9% of the entire U.S. population (and even higher portions of the population in certain areas).
Don't let customer sentiment get lost in translation. Knowing how your customers feel (despite what language they speak) is vital for your business. Providing translated customer sentiment surveys or interpretation for phone interviews and feedback sessions will help you reach this important segment of your customers.
Businesses have long known the value of customer satisfaction and its ability to help you attract and retain customers (and generate higher profits). Studies have shown that:
| A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in profits | |
| As much as 80% of your future revenues will come from 20% of your current customers | |
| Repeat customers spend about 67% more than new customers |
It's costly when your customers churn and leave for your competitors, which often happens when companies fail to invest in a customer-centric approach. Eventually, the practice of continually searching for new customers becomes unsustainable and leads to declining revenue. Investing in customer-centricity and retention now can save you from that trouble in the long run.
You already know that word of mouth advertising is one of the most valuable ways to promote your business. A 2019 Nielsen report revealed 83% of consumers say they trust a friend or family member's recommendation over all other forms of advertising. Word of mouth has expanded significantly in recent years with the rise of social media and online reviews. In the same report, 66% of respondents said they "completely" or "somewhat" trust reviews online.
If your consumers are unhappy, there is a good chance they will tell someone they know or leave an online review about their experiences, both of which can influence your ability to attract and retain customers.
Before you can address your customers' concerns and needs, you need to know how they feel.
Carefully crafted surveys can help you discover areas where your business is getting it right and where you might have room for improvement. However, if you're only conducting surveys in English, your LEP customers are either going to opt out by not participating, or they may not fully understand the questions and therefore will not be able to give accurate answers.
One study found that survey respondents go through four stages when responding to a survey:
| Understanding the question | |
| Identifying relevant information to respond | |
| Forming a judgment or opinion | |
| Providing an appropriate response |
When someone tries to complete a survey in a non-native language, especially one in which they are not proficient, they encounter problems at the very first stage. Even if they can overcome the challenge of understanding the question and proceed through the other stages, they may struggle to provide an accurate response in the final stage. Ultimately, the information they provide won't be as relevant to helping you understand the things that need fixing.
Start the conversation today to learn how GLOBO can help you understand the sentiments of your limited-English proficient customers.