Costa Rica Call Center Blog

March 9
Ellie Parpis

Major U.S. companies are well equipped to handle Spanish-speaking customer-service calls, a recent market research study found, but few Hispanic consumers are picking up the phone.

A survey conducted by Entrevista Market Research found that the number of Spanish-speaking consumers reaching out to corporations directly is surprisingly low. “There is a very small percentage of Spanish speaking people compared to the [overall] population that are calling into companies,” said Richard Shapiro, president of Entrevista, a division of The Center for Client Retention in Berkeley Heights, N.J. The firm’s clients include McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, Bayer and Procter & Gamble.

Entrevista approached its existing clients to learn more about the Hispanic customers that were dialing into their call centers and found that there was not enough data to work from. “They said . . . there are so few calls that we get in Spanish that we wouldn’t have enough names to give you,” Shapiro said. “So we decided to do our own research.”

Entrevista conducted a two-part study in which 1,000 Latino households were called to determine what companies they admired and what they were looking for from their interactions with the companies. The survey found that the companies that scored best offered an 800 number with a Spanish-speaking option, and demonstrated respect when interacting with the consumer.

Five hundred “mystery shopper” calls were then made to the call centers of the top 75 advertisers targeting the estimated market of 35 million Latino consumers. Entrevista determined that 86 percent of the shoppers reached a Spanish-speaking representative or interpreter; more than 85 percent of callers, who reached a Spanish-speaking rep, found that they could respond to their queries directly. Nearly 90 percent of the callers felt their exchanges felt personalized and unscripted; and 80 percent felt the reps took their time to assist them.

Procter & Gamble and Home Depot both fared well. Every call to P&G reached a Spanish-speaking representative, said Shapiro, and the service level was as high as it was with English-speaking calls. Home Depot went the “extra mile,” he explained, not only telling callers which of its stores had a Spanish-speaking manager, but also taking the initiative to provide store hours when they would be on site at the store.

“[Hispanic consumers] want to talk to someone who understands their culture and langue and if they think the companies don’t have those people available to them they are not going to call,” said Shapiro. He also offered some advice to advertisers that want to reach those consumers: “Companies should reach out to the Latino community through writing case studies in Hispanic publications and talking about it in their advertising—that they really want to hear from their Spanish-speaking consumers.”

Source: BrandWeek

Anyone has doubts that Hispanics (generaly speaking) have not been targeted by many companies with products, services and communication that best fit their needs?

Some interesting highligths from a news article that was published in May 08 at Internet Retailer (http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=26591)

• Hispanics represent the fastest-growing group in the U.S. population and among Internet users, and about half of online Hispanics prefer Spanish-language web sites. Yet most major online retailers neither provide web content in Spanish nor respond to customer inquiries in that language
• But at least two of the 50 largest e-retailers, consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co. and online florist 1-800-Flowers.com Inc., have in the last nine months launched Spanish-language sites duplicating nearly all the content of their English-language sites
• A Forrester survey last year showed that, while only 23% of Hispanic consumers require Spanish, a total of 51% prefer using Spanish web sites. And 28% said they were more likely to trust a company with a web site in Spanish. “A Spanish-language site is not just about reach but is also about brand trust and customer goodwill.
• The U.S. Census Bureau reported last month that the U.S. Hispanic population reached 45.5 million as of July 1, 2007, when it represented 15.1% of the U.S. population and was the largest and fastest-growing of U.S. minority groups
• Best Buy research shows the preference for shopping in Spanish is stronger when customers shop for complex products like home theater systems or computers. Customers are printing out product detail pages from the Spanish site and bringing them into stores, and call center agents are using the Spanish web content to help Spanish speakers on the phone

With shrinking sales and budgets, how can we tap on this opportunity?