Speak Spanish to me

Spanish fluency is in demand for customer service jobs

It’s a typical scenario in today’s world: you’ve bought a new electronic device and find yourself calling an 800 number to figure out how to use it. The recording at the other end gives you two options, “For English, press one. Para español, oprima el dos.”

More consumers are choosing the second option these days, creating a demand for people who can provide customer service in Spanish.

Two factors behind this trend are companies expanding internationally and the booming population of Spanish speakers in the United States, according to CareerBuilder.com spokeswoman Jennifer Grasz.

“If you’re serving a global community, you certainly need folks who can speak a second language and certainly Spanish is one of the most popular,” she says.
Companies are also investing more in customer service than they have in the past.

“Retention is a hot buzzword. When competing in a tighter economic environment, companies are investing to keep customers happy; this carries over to their sales,” Grasz explains.

Although call centers may come to mind when one thinks of customer service, many companies are now outsourcing to individuals working from home.
Arise, a company based in Miramar, Florida, is built around the model of “home sharing,” or connecting companies in need of customer-service providers with home-based individuals, says Manuel Prieto, Arise director of implementation.

About 7,500 Arise agents work around the country providing services including telesales, chats and e-mail response in several languages, Spanish being the second most popular to English.

The companies using Arise’s services span industries such as retail, technology and travel and include big names like Virgin Atlantic and Home Depot. Some agents even provide roadside assistance to stranded drivers.

These companies have a growing need for Spanish speakers, a tendency Prieto says he expects will continue.

“The demand for bilingual contact center agents has already been strong for a few years, but … in some ways the Spanish-speaking market has only recently begun to be recognized in terms of size and power,” he says, adding that Arise is currently looking to hire an additional 200-300 Spanish-speaking agents. Their language skills earn them an average of 20 percent more per hour than their monolingual counterparts.

To work from home, agents need a computer and secondary phone line dedicated to business calls. They must also establish themselves legally as independent service providers and invest in a few weeks of training.

In addition to having a “moderate level of comfort at the computer,” customer-service agents should be self-directed, motivated and able to multi-task, Prieto says.

And although most customer service these days happens over the phone or computer, in the end it’s still about inter-personal communication. People skills are a must, he adds.

As the types of companies needing Spanish-speaking representatives grows, management is discovering an motto well known in the sales world: “You can buy in any language, but if you want to sell you better speak the language of your customer.”