88: Cross-cultural Support with Aurore Lanchart

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 88 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is cross-cultural support, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I would like to welcome back to the podcast today, Ogour Lancha. Augur, it's lovely to have you back, and we're here today to talk about cross-cultural support. You're based in France and you've worked with support teams who support a broad range of customers from uh uh like from all sorts of different localities, right? So could could you talk to me about your experiences there?

Aurore Lanchart: 0:57

Um my experience is it's really different between countries in Europe because in Europe you are you have a big diversity. So for example, um when I work in e-commerce, we've had Spanish customers, German customers, English and French, and it was really, really different because your Spanish customer won't read at all your FAQ and just will ask you questions. Meanwhile, your German customer will read everything in your FAQ and then will ask you when they have no clue about their their problem. So it it's kind of different. So you have to do the same support for every country, but you know you have to adjust because of the cultural difference.

Charlotte Ward: 1:51

So it's as much about adjusting our expectations of how how our customers approach the product or the service as as adjusting how we respond to them then.

Aurore Lanchart: 2:03

Yeah, sure. I think there is an adjustment according the the tone of voice as well, because for example, you have to be more friendly with Italian or Spanish customer because their culture is super warm, and you don't need to be so warm with, for example, British or or German because the culture is a bit less warm than South Europe.

Charlotte Ward: 2:30

A bit not so much, but but a bit super. I won't take that personally. I won't take that personally. I agree though, I think that certain groups of customers, I mean, I don't want to kind of settle on nationalities, but I think nationalities obviously play a big part of this. But I think I think that there are certain cultural differences that we have to appreciate, you know, affect how our customers communicate with us, right?

Aurore Lanchart: 3:00

Yeah, and I think it's important to adjust because when you understand really precisely the culture of your customer, you can have straight and bonds, you know, you are more close to your customer and they can have more love for your brand and for your products. So it's really important to to understand. And I think the key is to recruit native uh for the country, for example. Um if I do support for Spain, I won't hire someone from Latin America because even they speak Spanish or a French who speaks perfectly Spanish because even they speak the language, you don't have all the the cultural things, you know, the details of the culture.

Charlotte Ward: 3:47

Yeah, yeah, the the culture is more than the language, isn't it? It's it's the entire customer context. You're absolutely right, it's not just language, it's it's it's the societal constructs around how they how they relate to each other as human beings and how you know for down down to the TV they watch or the way the government treats them and things like all of these things like really influence a person's approach to everything in life, right?

Aurore Lanchart: 4:18

Yeah, because um my my point is customer support is about empathy, but you have empathy, you have more empathy with people that who you are close with. So if you don't have the same culture, you you can have empathy, but not the level of empathy required to to provide a really great experience.

Charlotte Ward: 4:38

So you don't think we can train for that?

Aurore Lanchart: 4:42

Train for empathy? You can train, but you there is a lot of studies saying that you have more empathy with people they are like you. So it's easier, it's more natural for you to be more empathetic with people like you from the same background, from the same culture, from the same country.

Charlotte Ward: 5:03

It would be nice to think that we all had enough um budget to hire somebody for every nationality that we were required to support, but scaling that is is a bit problematic, isn't it? And hiring for it is a problem as well, actually. Hiring someone with the cultural background that you're looking for, the in the time zone with the skills. I mean, I I guess a lot depends on the service that you're supporting or the product that you're supporting. But I mean, in my team, for instance, you know, like really super um skilled engineers, if I start adding extra layers onto that list of requirements, it's an ever-shrinking pool of people, isn't it?

Aurore Lanchart: 5:49

It if it depends of the company, I think of the culture, for example. I know two companies, one French called Miro and Fresh Works, and they have people for every country. It's freelancers, but they manage to have people from every country to provide better support. And I think it's really relevant. People will do more and more remote, so maybe you you can have people in remote, maybe it's just for time shifts really short, like just the morning you have people in in Germany, and just the afternoon you have someone for Sweden or for Peru. I don't know. I think you can provide this kind of support using this strategy.

Charlotte Ward: 6:35

Yeah, using freelancers to give you that flexibility. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash eighty eight for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.