Commentary
Going Global
- by Stephanie Miller , December 11, 2007
Got customers outside the US? Hewlett Packard runs a program that crosses literally 16 time zones covering customers in 170 countries from North America to Europe/Africa to the Asian
Pacific Rim. At today's Summit, Daryl Nielsen and Jared Hansen shared an incredible number of learnings and tips for anyone expanding to a global program.
- Centralize processes by region to provide support, timely response and still maintain centralized control
- Privacy and Permission require a central, global database. You can not compromise on this.
- Asian characters take up more space than Roman characters (and can break a template)
- Localization is key - HP publishes in 26 languages
- Tapping customer profile data (job title, customer status, etc.) helps ensure relevancy
- Avoid a US-centric content, voice and tone
- Do translation locally - a badly translated message is very dangerous. Ask Daryl and Jared about the time when a headline "HP beats IBM..." as "IBM are idiots." Yikes!
- Implement a Follow the Sun operations strategy (24 hour coverage where unresolved issues are passed at end of day from London to US to Asia).
- Templates must accommodate for languages that don't read left to right
- Templates need to have common branding and customer service elements, but other than that, allow more flexibility. HP passes off centralized produced templates to the local groups. For example, some of the Asian markets want neon pink and other bright colors because that is what appeals to Asians.
- The US response rates are consistently lower than in other markets. Daryl attributes this to higher levels of email fatigue among US business professionals.
