Every so often, you probably get a call and the person on the other end either does not speak a lick of English or only speaks in very broken English. It is very hard to understand these potential customers, and even more frustrating for them because they are calling and looking for answers to their questions. When you are tired of not being able to understand these non-English speaking customers, but you still want to be of service to them without frustrating them, there are a few over-the-phone interpreting services you can engage to help you.
Hire Admins Who Speak More Than One Language
If you have it in your budget, hire more than one administrative assistant who can converse in more than one language. In most cases, you will need someone who speaks Spanish, but you may also need someone who speaks in Chinese (Mandarin AND Cantonese), Japanese, German, Arabic, Pakistani, Russian, and French. If you have these languages covered with the people you hire, then you will be able to converse with almost anyone who calls your business.
Working Through a Translation Service
This is a special phone company that takes your incoming foreign language calls and translates them in subtitles to you via a "type to text" phone. These phones have been more commonly used with the deaf community but are now being used to translate calls as well. This removes the need to hire multilingual staff, since the text phone and answering services do the job for you.
Translation Apps
If you have a smartphone or tablet at work, download a translation app. Every time a call comes in where the speaker cannot speak fluent English, the app can translate for you both. It will automatically pick up on the language of the caller, translate into text what the caller is calling about, and then work to translate a response from you. If you hit the "speak" button after you have spoken and said what you wanted to say, the app will then repeat what it has translated loudly enough for the caller to hear it on the other end of the line. It is a much more complicated option because everyone has to wait for the app to translate back and forth, but it is an effective way to communicate when you do not have enough money to hire multilingual translators to work in your office.
For more information, contact local telephonic interpreting services.