Do you run a 501(c)(3) crisis line and need to support callers in multiple languages such as English and Spanish? Is it crucial that your agency never misses a call, and that phone calls from Spanish speaking callers and clients are managed in accordance with your Language Access Plans? If so, you’re in the right place. We’ve got a bilingual answering service that was designed just for you.
What Are Bilingual Answering Services
In the US, a bilingual answering service typically refers to an answering service where the human operators or virtual receptionists provided by the answering service can speak English as well as Spanish. This allows them to answer calls in English as well as Spanish.
You should know that there are a lot of different names for this topic used in the industry. If you’re interested in a bilingual virtual receptionist, you might also look into a Spanish answering service if that’s the only language you need. Some people use “bilingual call center”, “bilingual answering service” and “bilingual virtual receptionist” interchangeably.
Why stop at Spanish?
It’s important to make sure that Spanish speakers can get exceptional service from your agency. Let’s not stop there though. What about Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hindi and other languages? If you’re accustomed to using translators as part of your crisis line then you might find it relatively easy to add support for many more languages with the advent of high quality phone interpretation services that are available today.
How can we support multiple languages?
While it’s possible to support many languages via a phone interpretation service, we’ve heard that the result is somewhat less than ideal for callers. Crisis callers speaking to your agency through an interpreter will often keep their questions short, and focus them more on finding resources that can support them in their primary language as opposed to actually receiving support from the agency then. Our recommendations are:
If it’s possible for you to recruit advocates (paid or volunteer) that speak multiple languages then that is ideal.
Put systems in place to make sure that callers always speak to an on-call advocate that speaks their language (if one is available). There are a number of ways to do this. If capacity is an issue then consider that you can also use callbacks to defer non urgent calls and return them during less busy times when an advocate that speaks the required language is available.
Design and implement a Language Access Plan. We know how important it is to support every every caller in their primary language, so we also provide some training with some of the best practices we’ve seen about how to best support Limited English Proficient callers. Feel free to reach out.
Consider if there are any Limited English Proficient individuals that speak Spanish, or some of the other languages that your callers speak. Are you able to train and onboard them as staff members or as volunteers? As you might expect, our technology communicates with your advocates in their primary language so language barriers shouldn’t be an issue there.
What languages does HelplineSoftware.com support?
While many bilingual answering services primarily support English and Spanish, HelplineSoftware.com takes a different approach.
We work in the specific niche of crisis lines, and we know you often need to support a lot more languages. That’s why we support over 40 languages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We don’t just provide you with bilingual operators. This can be a key tool for your agency to support a broader audience. Is there a language that you support which isn’t on this list? If so, please reach out.
Choose the leading provider for 24/7 crisis line answering services to be sure that you don’t have missed calls, and that you’re fully able to support all callers in the their preferred language.
Here are some of the languages we support:
Afrikaans
Arabic
Bulgarian
Bengali
Catalan
Mandarin Chinese
Czech
Danish
German
Modern Greek
English
Spanish
Finnish
Filipino
French
Gujarati
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Icelandic
Italian
Japanese
Kannada
Korean
Malayalam
Malay
Norwegian
Dutch
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Slovak
Serbian
Swedish
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Cantonese
What about data analytics?
Great question! We know that data analytics is an important part of securing the funding you need. HelplineSoftware.com provides you with the detailed real-time call logs that you’d expect from the leading crisis line answering service. Reports track the caller’s language, and you can even use them to track the language of the person that answered the call.
Note: If you’re shopping around, note that many answering services provide customers with daily call logs or daily call reports reports. If downloadable real-time call reports are important to you then make sure you check for them.
How is HelplineSoftware.com different from traditional bilingual answering services?
HelplineSoftware.com supports many languages, and is specialized for nonprofit crisis lines. Whereas traditional bilingual telephone answering services will provide a bilingual call center so businesses can support Spanish speaking customers, we specialize in helping the needs of crisis lines.
Small businesses may use bilingual answering services for:
Bilingual customer service
Scheduling appointments
Attracting more customers
To capture leads
To get a competitive edge / stay ahead of the competition
Expand customer base through bilingual options
Increase revenue
Get more leads
Much more
These are all important needs of small business owners. However, the needs of bilingual crisis lines are a bit different. For us, callers don’t represent one of your potential customers, potential leads, or clients, but rather fellow humans that are potentially in crisis. We understand how crucial is is that no call is missed. If that feels like what you’re looking for then please reach out.
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