In today’s interconnected world, communication with customers and businesses across borders is more vital than ever. This means getting in contact with people from different viewpoints and cultures. While English may be a widely accepted language of business this does not mean you can come to customer interactions only from your own necessarily limited viewpoint, especially if you want to effectively bring your point across and understand the needs of your customer. As part of the Support team at BTC Embedded Systems, I have worked together with my colleagues from around the world to provide dedicated support for our customers in America, Asia and Europe.
With my own background as well, immigrating to the UK at a young age, this has gotten me extremely interested in the challenges and solutions a global company like BTC Embedded Systems has for providing support.
Time, Physical and Language Barriers
The most obvious problem in supporting customers distributed around the world is that they are in different places and speak different languages. For example, BTC Embedded Systems has users in over a dozen countries spread across 4 continents!
Here BTC ES has a simple solution, with our support teams in the USA, Germany, France, China and Japan we have team members available across a large range of time zones who can provide support in local times and languages. Our European main office is also conveniently situated between our major hubs to be able to provide support to customers inside of their time zones.
Additionally, colleagues from our HQ carry out regular business trips to meet with clients directly. This is particularly effective for cases involving sensitive data or complex toolchains allowing support to be provided directly in the client environment.
At BTC Embedded Systems I have really benefited from the opportunity to take part in meetings applying my English, German and Japanese and learn from my senior colleagues how to effectively debug and provide solutions for complex problems.
Communication differences
Even when providing support in English, it is important to remember, there is not only one English language and there is not only one way of using it.
A famous example is the difference between British English and American English. For support staff used to one or the other, genuine spelling differences such as “organise” versus “organize” may be mistakenly recognised as spelling errors. Here it is important to focus on the content of the message rather than getting hung up on perceived mistakes.
Different English dialects can also contain completely different vocabulary, or different ways of using familiar vocabulary. Some clear examples can be found when comparing American English and Indian English dialects. Phrases that come up often are “doing the needful” in Indian English for performing required actions and using “less” in a context where an American English speaker might use “low” or “little”.
These examples show there is no “Standard English”. As English continues to get used around the world it will continue to change and fit to different requirements. Global teams need to remain aware of this to provide effective support.
Even when using the same language and dialect, different cultures (and individuals!) can have different communication styles.
Personally, I have found that the indirect style of speech I have learned in my time in the UK does not always come across as intended. For example, outlining a problem and giving a possible solution, but stopping short of saying “Do this”. In one case, I needed a client to perform an action on their side. I communicated this only by explaining that I tried it on my side and that it did not work. To me, the implication that they needed to perform an action was clear, however, this was not immediately obvious to the client.
What I have learned is that directness counts. As a support engineer, clients come to us with technical problems looking for technical solutions. Clear requests and instructions make meetings more effective and are better at bringing the meaning across.
In all interactions I have found politeness to be key. Even if there are misunderstandings, when it is clear both sides are professionally working towards a solution to the problem at hand, cases move along smoothly.
Tool use cases
During my time at BTC Embedded Systems, I have noticed that different regions tend to focus on different use cases of the tool. Combined with the large number of users, we are exposed to a wide range of styles to use Embedded Platform.
For example, users in Europe tend to focus on our use cases for Requirement Based Testing and Back-to-Back Testing, whereas our Formal Verification solutions are popular with our users in Japan. This helps illustrate the different priorities between companies in different regions. A variety of factors could play into this difference, including differing attitudes or legislation. This highlights the work put in by the BTC Embedded Systems team to provide our global user base with the features they need.
The support team meets teams working in different ways and in different parts of the tool. This is valuable as we can learn from our own customers approaches and in turn apply those lessons to other clients.
In this way our support team members can act as a conduit for knowledge across a dispersed BTC Embedded Platform community.
Conclusion
Having a user base spread out across the world comes with challenges. A company needs to be aware of different communication styles and priorities between regions to be able to effectively reach out and connect with customers.
If a company like BTC Embedded Systems rises up to these challenges, they can reap the rewards of having their product elevated to a global brand, reaching more users and gaining knowledge from a wide range of sources. At BTC Embedded Systems this is done by our diverse and experienced team.
If you would like to get in contact with our team or would like any more information on the use cases mentioned in this article, you can find our contact details grouped by region!
