Language barriers can kill a business

popemb · September 28th, 2012, 11:26 AM

I am afraid I have just lost one of my customers because of my limited english level. I feel very sad and unconfident about this.

Language barriers can kill a business!

Funkym · October 2nd, 2012, 03:13 AM

Hi popemb (Vicky), I can totally understand where you are coming from.

We currently deal with a couple of overseas digitizers to digitize our embroidered patch and iron-on patch designs. I think one of them is in Pakistan and I am not sure when the other one is located. I found that both of them are competent digitizers but the guy in Pakistan seems to make silly mistakes and I am sure that it is due to the fact that he does not understand theEnglish words for many of the embroidery terms. The main thing is that you learn the main terms so you know what your clients need.

English is a hard language, but it is not impossible to learn. So don't give up try to always keep learning as much as you can. If you really want to help and assist you client you will succeed.

warist · October 2nd, 2012, 01:11 PM

Where are you from? If you can find English speakers to practice with then your skills will improve dramatically.

Another thing is that you can always preface a discussion by saying "I speak English, but am still learning so I would like to apologize in advance for any potential miscommunications that we might have." This is what I do whenever I deal with customers and speak Spanish. My Spanish is good, but no where close to how good it needs to be to talk about printing and the intricacies of the process, but giving the customer fair warning usually helps.

NWEmbroidery · December 27th, 2012, 05:19 PM

If you are a digitizer, it really pays to have a good understanding of the English language... I have seen far too many "typos" happen from digitizers not actually knowing what letters they were digitizing.

Some digitizers are so unfamiliar with English that the alphabet itself is nothing but a series of rectangles and curves for them to digitize, rather than elements of actual words.