DIVERSITY | Offering a place for everyone
13 February 2008
Cultural Competence Required in Today's Economy
By the Staff of DiversityInc
Telecommunications giant Verizon Communications employs a multiethnic workforce for its multiethnic customers. It’s good business, but it requires effort and commitment. Sometimes immigrant groups join the mainstream when the stream itself widens.
DiversityInc is the leading publication on corporate diversity.
In today’s global economy, employees and customers come from many different cultures and speak many different languages. Companies that want to compete must be fluent in the languages and cultural nuances of communities.
One U.S. company that understands this and has built a strong consumer and employee base is telecommunications giant Verizon Communications, number six on the 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity® list. Verizon has developed a strong multicultural work force and management while focusing on consumers for whom English is a second language.
Verizon provides products and services in foreign languages. That effort once meant hiring a minimal number of Spanish-speaking operators. Now it means going further externally and internally by building relationships among employees who have different cultural backgrounds. To that end, Verizon has strong company-sanctioned employee-resource groups that are valued both as recruitment and retention tools and for their input on the consumer markets.
The employee groups are based on affiliation with traditionally under-represented groups, usually considering race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. The company pays for them, allows them to meet during the work day, and has a senior executive involved with each one. The groups are used to help recruit and retain employees and to gain ideas and test plans to market to customers.
“It’s a journey not only for the business but for each individual that constitutes the business,” said Magda Yrizarry, Verizon’s vice president for workplace culture, diversity, and compliance. “If you can only see talent that comes in a package that looks just like you, you have a problem because our customer base doesn’t necessarily look just like you.”
The company’s diverse workforce is exemplified by its retention of African-American, Asian, and Hispanic employees, all of whom stay at the company at the same rate as white employees or at an even higher rate. The company reported that in 2006 39 percent of its managers were African-American, Asian, or Hispanic.
Verizon, with the diversity focus in mind, has 12 consumer call centers that provide service in Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Russian. For customers who are small-business owners, Verizon provides service in Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Vietnamese.
“This effort goes back to the early 1970s, but then it was probably five or six people in a main call center handling in-language calls,” said Pedro Correa, vice president for multilingual consumer and business sales for Verizon Plus retail stores.
Today, Verizon employs more than 1,500 people in its call centers who provide service in languages other than English. “That tells you where the market and the whole country have gone,” Correa said. “Back then, it was survival mode. Today, there’s a business reason to do it. The return on investment pays for itself.”
Verizon estimates its multilingual-customer segment is growing at a rate of 9 percent annually. Hispanics now make up 11.2 percent of its U.S. customer base, and Asian Americans, 6.7 percent.
Verizon has seen a bump in revenue of between 10 percent and 20 percent from the in-language efforts. “Enhancing the customer’s experience through in-language service helps offset losses by driving loyalty, which drives growth,” Correa said.
Correa is also in charge of the company’s 62 Verizon Plus stores. Those stores that provide in-language service deliver up to 20 percent more customer revenue than stores that do not. Of the 660 employees who work in those stores, about half are Hispanic, Asian-American, African-American, or Native American, and about half are fluent in a foreign language spoken by consumers who patronize the stores.
“Hispanic and Asian customers prefer to do business face to face, so we give that outlet at our stores and then provide the in-language experience as well,” Correa said.
For Verizon, a company that competes with heavy hitters such as AT&T, Qwest, Sprint Nextel, Comcast, and Time Warner, building brand loyalty is tantamount to survival.
“In business, creating a relationship with the customer is most important,” Correa said. “So we do this because it is about enhancing the customers’ experience, which ultimately gets them to buy more products and services.”
Added Yrizarry: “Creating and sustaining a culture that both values and effectively manages diversity for better performance doesn’t just happen — it requires effort and commitment. You have to be as intentional and determined about diversity as any other business imperative.”
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
