In today’s business world, almost every management expert knows the phrase “Think globally, act locally.” The more important questions are ‘How exactly do you behave according to that phrase in an international environment?’ ‘How are you acting locally while managing an international team including a number of nations and an even higher number of languages serving different countries, without forgetting the global aspect behind it?’ In business life, another hurdle appears when different individual cultures clash with the corporate culture of the existing team.

Those and other questions came to my mind when we took over the Belgium market. Since then, the team I am operationally responsible for in Germany consists of 55 employees, three brands, two locations, five different nations including six different languages.

So, in order to drive that piece of business into a success, I started to draft a Roadmap for Intercultural Customer Service Management which mainly consists of the following steps:

Cultural Awareness

The basis of intercultural management is awareness. Before creating an international team, you have to be absolutely aware of the fact that there might be different cultural attitudes beside the personality and human nature of each of the team members. Moreover, the target market for which you provide your service might be very specific according to its customer base or other geographical, historical, political or other environmental challenges. Try to know and understand them before you create your strategy for that market.

Cultural Management

Influenced by different cultures, the expectation of different team members of how the team should be managed might vary. American and German team members might evaluate management capabilities on the basis of brilliant results and French team members could lay higher emphasis on the efficient use of resources*. Depending on the mixture of the team, you have to learn the best way of management without forgetting that culture is just one aspect beside the personality and human nature of your team members. However, the possible different expectations of how the team managed also include presentation style or different understanding of visuals.

Culture versus Processes

If you design the right processes for each market, be aware that processes that have been developed as best practice in other markets might not work in another. This is dependent on the different type of customer culture as well as on the culture of the team. If the process doesn’t feel right for your new team and thus it does not work, you have to find the reasons and either develop your team or the original process into a new one to generate success.

Motivation, Reward and Recognition

If you want to motivate the team, but also reward and recognise them for their success, you have to act carefully according to the cultural environment. Overall, there are too many specifics for all countries to mention. However, some key aspects you should recognise are the differences in long-term orientation, power distance, individualism and uncertainty avoidance between different nations and cultures e.g. you will not motivate somebody with a low individualism by giving them feedback in public, even if it’s good feedback. Moreover, you will not easily suggest a team to take over responsibility and case management for their customers if they have very high uncertainty avoidance.

To put it in a nutshell, there is no clear or strict rule on how to manage an intercultural team in Customer Service. The basis for your progress should be awareness as it helps you to understand and base your management upon that. Using a very strong corporate culture, that is the basis of all we do at Percepta, so we have managed to create an international work environment that combines several European cultures from Germany and has been honoured with each of those services being among the best premium providers within Europe for our customers and clients.

I would love to hear from anyone who can share their own experiences of managing many cultures so please feel free to leave a comment below.

*Garatt-Gnamm, N. et. al., Efficient Managers in Cruzéby et al., Images, Cultures and Communication, SIETAR 1997, p. 118