While English once dominated the internet, it's now the preferred language of barely a quarter of the online population at just just 25.2 percent. As of April 2019, 19.3 percent spoke Chinese, 7.9 percent spoke Spanish, and 5.2 percent preferred Arabic.

If you're selling online and catering only to English speakers, you might be missing out on a lot of potential sales. Fortunately, with a little technology and a few general communication skills, you can expand into a multilingual market without breaking the bank.

A few years ago, a colleague turned me on to a pretty fun procrastination game — type a few English sentences into Google Translate, translate them into another language, translate the result back to English...and repeat. It only took a few cycles to end up with a hysterically garbled mess.

At Olark, we believe human connections are essential to business growth. But to really connect with someone, you need to understand their context. What problem are they trying to solve with your product? How did they hear about your company? Are they considering switching away from one of your competitors, and if so, why?

What is social selling?

You probably already know that your target customers hang out on social sites — whether it's a Facebook group for runners (who might buy your shorts!), a LinkedIn community for small business owners (who might buy your software!), or even a Quora thread about sticky IT issues (solution: your professional IT services). You may even have closed a sale by joining a group and weighing in on a question or two. But did you know there's a name for that?

Every time you interact with a lead or customer on chat, you learn something new about their goals, preferences, and priorities. From the seemingly minor (e.g., shipping preferences) to the sales and marketing “jackpot” (e.g., a detailed summary of a customer’s motivations for using your product), quick access to customer information can be a game-changer for growing your business…

One of the best things about selling online is the opportunity to reach prospective customers anywhere in the world. But if you’re attracting a global audience (yay!), you’ll likely find yourself fielding questions and requests in multiple languages, many of which your chat team doesn’t speak (hrrm).  

Want to chat with your customers directly from Slack? The Olark Live Chat Slack App makes that possible! You can also share conversations with teammates in Slack, ask for help when things get busy, and celebrate together when one of your team members gets a 5-star customer rating. 

This story is part of our Making Business Human series. For more on the series and our mission, check out this post!

Creating connections between customers and businesses is at the core of Olark. Since day one, the heart of our product has been about humanizing websites through chat. Our mission can really be boiled down to  a single, short statement: Make Business Human.

A few years ago, while chauffeuring me to the airport the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my mom casually suggested that I start a food blog. “You’d be such a hit!” she gushed. “We all loved your Piecaken!”

At my age, I like to think I’m immune to parental flattery, but I never did outgrow the longing for internet fame. So, I started exploring blog platforms. I didn’t need much—a rich text editor, simple photo formatting, and basic analytics so I could chart my rise to stardom.