Do you operate a 501(c)(3) crisis line and need to help callers in languages like English and Spanish? Is it key for your agency not to miss calls and to handle Spanish-speaking callers according to your Language Access Plans? If yes, you’re in the right place. Our bilingual answering service is created just for you.
What Are Bilingual Answering Services
In the US, a bilingual answering service typically refers to an answering service where the human operators or virtual receptionists provided by the answering service can speak English as well as Spanish. This allows them to answer calls in English as well as Spanish.
Language-based routing is one type of skills-based routing. For the complete framework on routing reliability—including skills matching, fallback design, and audit requirements—see call routing solutions.
You should know that there are a lot of different names for this topic used in the industry. If you're interested in a bilingual virtual receptionist, you might also look into a Spanish answering service if that's the only language you need. Some people use "bilingual call center", "bilingual answering service" and "bilingual virtual receptionist" interchangeably.
Why stop at Spanish?
Ensure Spanish speakers receive great service, but don’t stop there. Consider Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hindi, and more. If you use translators for your crisis line, it’s easy to expand support. Today’s high-quality phone interpretation services make this possible.
How can we support multiple languages?
While a phone interpretation service can support multiple languages, it may not be perfect for crisis callers. Callers might ask shorter questions and seek resources in their primary language instead of getting direct help from your agency. Here’s what we suggest:
- If it’s possible for you to recruit advocates (paid or volunteer) that speak multiple languages then that is ideal.
- Put systems in place to make sure that callers always speak to an on-call advocate that speaks their language (if one is available). There are a number of ways to do this. If capacity is an issue then consider that you can also use callbacks to defer non urgent calls and return them during less busy times when an advocate that speaks the required language is available.
- Design and implement a Language Access Plan. We know how important it is to support every every caller in their primary language, so we also provide some training with some of the best practices we’ve seen about how to best support Limited English Proficient callers. Feel free to reach out.
- Consider if there are any Limited English Proficient individuals that speak Spanish, or some of the other languages that your callers speak. Are you able to train and onboard them as staff members or as volunteers? As you might expect, our technology communicates with your advocates in their primary language so language barriers shouldn’t be an issue there.
What languages does HelplineSoftware.com support?
While many bilingual answering services primarily support English and Spanish, HelplineSoftware.com takes a different approach.
We work in the specific niche of crisis lines, and we know you often need to support a lot more languages. That’s why we support over 40 languages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We don’t just provide you with bilingual operators. This can be a key tool for your agency to support a broader audience. Is there a language that you support which isn’t on this list? If so, please reach out.
Choose the leading provider for 24/7 crisis line answering services to be sure that you don’t have missed calls, and that you’re fully able to support all callers in the their preferred language.
Here are some of the languages we support:
- Afrikaans
- Arabic
- Bulgarian
- Bengali
- Catalan
- Mandarin Chinese
- Czech
- Danish
- German
- Modern Greek
- English
- Spanish
- Finnish
- Filipino
- French
- Gujarati
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Icelandic
- Italian
- Japanese
- Kannada
- Korean
- Malayalam
- Malay
- Norwegian
- Dutch
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Slovak
- Serbian
- Swedish
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
- Cantonese
What about data analytics?
Great question! We know that data analytics is an important part of securing the funding you need. HelplineSoftware.com provides you with the detailed real-time call logs that you’d expect from the leading crisis line answering service. Reports track the caller’s language, and you can even use them to track the language of the person that answered the call.
Note: If you’re shopping around, note that many answering services provide customers with daily call logs or daily call reports reports. If downloadable real-time call reports are important to you then make sure you check for them.
How is HelplineSoftware.com different from traditional bilingual answering services?
HelplineSoftware.com supports many languages, and is specialized for nonprofit crisis lines. Whereas traditional bilingual telephone answering services will provide a bilingual call center so businesses can support Spanish speaking customers, we specialize in helping the needs of crisis lines.
Small businesses may use bilingual answering services for:
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Bilingual customer service
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Scheduling appointments
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Attracting more customers
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To capture leads
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To get a competitive edge / stay ahead of the competition
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Expand customer base through bilingual options
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Increase revenue
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Get more leads
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Much more
Small business needs are important, but bilingual crisis lines have unique needs. Our callers aren’t just customers or leads—they are people in crisis. Missing a call can be critical. If you’re looking for a solution that understands this, please reach out.
