It’s no secret that Spanish is becoming more widespread in the United States, which has nearly 9.4 million Hispanic households. According to Ethnologue, 8.9 percent of the American population was Spanish-speaking, based on data from the 1990 U.S. Census. Spanish speakers increased from 17.3 million in 1990 to 28.1 million in 2000, representing a 62 percent rise, according to U.S. government reports. And various Asian languages are becoming more widespread, especially on the West Coast with increased immigration. About 2 million people in the United States speak Chinese at home, according to reports. Other European languages as well as Creole have pockets of native speakers throughout North America, too.
Service providers need to be cognizant of how populations are shifting. While service providers shouldn’t waste the time and effort implementing Spanish-speaking operators and the associated technologies in an area where 97 percent of the population speaks only English, for example, it is important for providers to watch where pockets of foreign-language speakers are developing.
“Any business can achieve an advantageous position by allowing a person to speak in his mother tongue,” says Doug Hayward, managing director at Alpha Consulting. “Language can provide a competitive advantage, and these days, service providers have to look at every angle.” And, he adds, these markets typically are underserved, so a service provider can get a strong foothold and build some loyalty by getting into the game now.
Most of the large incumbent telcos have operator services and directory-assistance departments in house, while some of the smaller telcos may find it more cost-efficient to outsource these functions. In either case, companies like CanTalk can provide solutions based on telco needs, ranging from a full staff of Spanishspeaking operators to general dialing assistance and instruction.
According to Maureen Mitchells, president and CEO of CanTalk, if a service provider can offer a language of choice for a non-native speaker, it can increase the bottom line by about 25 percent.
CanTalk, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, provides operator service and directory assistance in 110 languages via operators and automated systems.
The company differentiates itself by working with dialects to increase the comfort level of the telecom end customer. “There is a vast difference between Argentinean Spanish and Mexican Spanish, for example,” Mitchells says, “or between Osaka Japanese and Tokyo Japanese.”
“Not that many businesses overall take the trouble to talk to people in their own language,” Hayward says. So a carrier can easily cultivate loyalty and referrals by doing this. “And the overall cost is not that big,” he adds. “It’s a small thing that creates big value.”
Speaking the right language also is extremely valuable in emergency situations, notes Hayward. When you are faced with an emergency, oftentimes, it’s your mother tongue you revert to,” he says. “That’s the time when operator services that can handle different languages become particularly important. When you’re in trouble, you don’t want a menu. You want someone who is speaking your language.”
Carriers should be able to provide service in the proper languages to their subscribers, says Nicholas S. Costantino, carrier networks global business line manager for the operator services and access network division of Nortel Networks.
Nortel’s strategy is to enable carriers to get the right service to the right customer, Costantino says. “You don’t know who is dialing 411 or 0, so you have to predict,” he says.
Nortel’s operator services and directory assistance solutions allow carriers to establish the principal language used on a per-line basis. A live operator might recognize enough of the customer’s language and immediately switch via a queuing system. Language also can be selected on the Nortel equipment via an announcement that gives the caller a menu option.
Another option is predictive technology. CanTalk has proprietary language forecasting tools, Mitchells says. “We can help our customers determine what language, from what country, at what time period with 97 percent accuracy. That ability to direct the right language with the right cultural nuance builds up customer loyalty.”
Service providers also can use speech-recognition solutions to help make sure their customers get the right language immediately and without having to go through a menu.
“Directory assistance is a killer app for speech-recognition,” says Chris Matson, directory assistance director for ScanSoft, a speech solutions provider.
“What we do is on the front end,”Matson says. ScanSoft supports about 46 languages and offers different levels of language recognition, he says. “It’s a matter of building the prompts and user dialogs to support English and other languages. For example, a carrier can provide a menu prompt to let the system know what they prefer.
ScanSoft’s solutions are key for those service providers who are looking to cut costs by eliminating operator time and implementing automation. “Operator services are very laborintensive,” Matson says. “Operator costs account for about two-thirds of the cost of directory assistance calls.” By applying speech recognition technology that can work with a range of languages, service providers can reduce the time an operator actually has to be on the call and thereby save the caller’s time, as well, he says.
Overall, it’s a matter of enhancing operator services and directory assistance so everyone is served equally. “In North America, we are used to picking up the phone and being able to get an operator that speaks our language,” Hayward says. “As the population becomes more diverse with different languages, foreign language speakers are developing the same expectations. So it’s up to the operating companies to meet the challenge.”
