In today’s business environment, all companies are operating within a multilingual economy where diversity prevails. The continuous demand for foreign language skills across most industries, as revealed in a survey conducted for ACTFL by Ipsos with the support of Language Testing International (LTI) and Pearson, underscores the undeniable advantage of having an effective multilingual business approach that includes hiring multilingual professionals. Evaluating metrics to assess the success of your multilingual strategy—especially the effectiveness of your multilingual hires—is now imperative.

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findings from the survey for ACTFL on the importance of foreign language skills in business
Source: ACTFL

Selecting Your Metrics

“The multilingual marketing approach allows you to communicate with people regardless of their geographical location, creating bonds and encouraging people to trust you.” (Laine-Naida) Monitoring and analyzing metrics to evaluate the impact of your approach and how you stand out when compared to your competitors is essential. The choice of metrics depends on your organizational goals with regards to promoting your products or services to culturally and ethnically diverse customers, industry type, and targeted geographical markets. Metrics should also correlate to the employees responsible for engaging with your diverse customers in their preferred language.

The primary objective of any business and its employees is to meet or, in the best-case scenario, exceed customer expectations, especially when catering to a multilingual customer base. There are several key metrics and methods that can provide insights into the successes achieved as well as the areas of improvement in your multilingual approach.

Customer Feedback

Gathering feedback (through methods such as surveys) directly from customers who interact with your multilingual employees is vital, as their experience and satisfaction levels greatly influence their purchasing decisions. Additionally, tracking customer support metrics such as customer satisfaction ratings for the provision of services in their preferred languages by your multilingual employees helps evaluate their effectiveness.

Social Media and Website Engagement

When seeking to improve the execution of multilingual efforts, analyzing social media and website engagement serves as a starting point. Having multilingual marketing professionals on your team can help you keep track of follower growth, likes, comments in languages other than English, and the shares that your business generates among multilingual audiences.

Website performance assessment is important in understanding if your multilingual clientele finds your website useful and how they engage with it. Does your website support the language preferences of all your diverse visitors? Is its content culturally relevant and linguistically accurate? Do the multilingual employees responsible for updating website content in various languages truly command the languages they claim they are proficient in? Metrics such as page views, time on site, and conversion rates shed light on the effectiveness of your online multilingual approach. If applicable, you can even compare conversion rates for the different languages available on your digital platforms to identify areas for improvement and who your star customers are so you can better cater to them.

Sales and Revenue Tracking

Assessing the resonance of your company’s multilingual approach and the effectiveness of your multilingual employees is incomplete without tracking sales and revenue. To gauge the effectiveness of your language strategy in terms of cost, compare expenses associated with translation and customer support—to mention a few—against the generated revenue and establish the Return on Investment (ROI) of your multilingual endeavors. Moreover, evaluating market dominance and expansion into new niches using key metrics like market share, brand recognition, and customer acquisition using specific languages can also be beneficial. To do all this, it is paramount to make sure you have employees with the language proficiency needed to meet and exceed your business goals.

Validating Language Proficiency of Multilingual Talent

Make sure you have the right multilingual professionals in place to prevent language skills gaps, and effectively operate in a growing global multilingual economy. In order to ensure your multilingual talent possesses the minimum levels of proficiency in the target languages, consider incorporating language assessments into your hiring and retention practices.

Language Testing International® (LTI) is a leader in providing language proficiency assessments with over 30 years of experience administering remotely proctored language tests in more than 120 languages. As the exclusive licensee if ACTFL, LTI provides valid and reliable language credentials in listening, writing, speaking, and reading for you to hire and implement your multilingual business approach with confidence.

Watch: Four Tips for Hiring Multilingual Talent

Sources

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the Lead with Languages Campaign commissioned Ipsos Public Affairs, with the support of Pearson LLC and Language Testing International. (2019). “Making Languages Our Business: Addressing Foreign Language Demand Among U.S. Employers.” https://www.actfl.org/uploads/files/general/MakingLanguagesOurBusiness_FullReport.pdf Warren Laine-Naida.

“9 Benefits of a Multilingual Marketing Approach for Your Business.” Digital Consulting. May 17, 2023. https://warrenlainenaida.net/9-benefits-of-a-multilingual-marketing-approach-for-your-business/

Vasco, Pedro. “How to Measure the Success of Your Language Operations”. July 23, 2021. CustomerThink. https://customerthink.com/how-to-measure-the-success-of your-language-operations/

Madeline Martínez is a Multicultural Navigator Specialist at URBANDER, a Woman and Minority Business Enterprise (WMBE) specializing in transforming businesses to advance humanity. URBANDER’s role is to serve as an extension of Marketing, Diversity, Human Resources, Procurement, Community Relations, and Social Responsibility teams, providing innovative approaches in the areas of strategic marketing, content development, workforce development, community outreach and IDEAS (inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and sustainability). Madeline holds a both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Communications from the University of Puerto Rico and is an experienced copywriter and content developer dedicated to amplifying the voices of URBANDER’s clients. From blogs and articles to social media posts and interviews, Madeline is a skilled writer across diverse topics integrating her marketing, business and academic acumen. Though her earlier work as a Publications Officer at the Inter American University in Puerto Rico, and her most recent performance as a Spanish Interpreter, Substitute Teacher, and Instructional Assistant for English-language learning elementary school students, Madeline has impacted countless families as they have navigated migrating to the U.S. from Spanish-speaking countries. As a bilingual professional, Madeline is also proficient in translating written documents from English to Spanish, and vice versa. She has received LTI issued ACTFL Language Proficiency Certificates in Spanish as follows: Advanced Writing, Advanced Listening, Advanced Reading and Superior Speaking. During her downtime, Madeline loves spending time with her family, and enjoys dancing, movies, photography, and coffee. She considers herself a continuous learner. “A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers”- Helen Keller

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