Why do we need to let go off that ‘ITALIAN’ client!

Fortunately, I have had my share of experience with global clients. Whether it be US, Latin America, Europe, Australia or Middle East, most of my portfolio companies gave me ample opportunity to explore business opportunities across these geographies!

Working with such varied cultures is quite an experience; especially when language becomes a constraint.

Personally, I have always refrained from working with clients that I am unable to speak with due to language barrier. Does that mean that I have seen companies working with people who neither speak, write or understand even a word of each other’s language? Yes; and if you are NOT shocked, I am not amazed

One of my portfolio companies had an Italian client whose project was a little too off the projected timelines (about 2 months and hence, lagging payments). To top it off, I realized that the only way of communication with this client was through emails and Google! Are you confused? Let me elaborate…

The client emailed their concerns in their native language (Italian), which we translated to English to comprehend (using Google Translator). Then, we sent our responses in English, which they translated to Italian (presumably).

I am still trying to figure out how we managed to secure this project

Needless to mention, this account had become quite a burden and we had scheduled an internal meeting to decide the ‘FATE’. A quick history – there was a never ending chain of emails where our PM and the client’s CTO wouldn’t agree on some supposedly ‘pending’ work. Our PM actually deemed these as ‘change requests’ / ‘NEW SCOPE’ and refused to do it within the existing project (scope)!

I could see the Project Manager and our CTO planning a wrap up. Though a bit confused, I managed to mumble, “Have we tried speaking with the client on the project issues?”

As expected, I got an echo from both, ‘Well, they don’t speak or understand English and we have really wasted a lot of effort in writing ‘lengthy’ explanation emails”.

My next question was if they had tried to schedule a call with them, to which they remarked that the client had declined on two occasions when contacted by one of our EX-Account Managers! Was this a clue? Somehow, I felt that we should write one last email to this client stating that we need to discuss before we could continue the project.

Within an hour of my email, the client responded with a yes! It took me 2 hrs to resolve the discussion because of the language barrier but my company learnt a really GOOD lesson – Communication is key!

I guess even I wasn’t expecting this, but the client himself exclaimed that why didn’t we (both my company and his own) tried to sort things over a call before. Trust me, we could have actually averted this disaster if this initiative could have been taken long ago!.

Anyway, as a result, this ITALIAN client has become one of the biggest accounts (yeah, a surprise) that will long be cherished by my employer.

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