5 ways remote video and telephone interpreting can help your business

By March of 2020, Zoom had added more new members than it had during the entirety of 2019. This march online was symptomatic of the shift in our everyday working lives, as we all took to commuting no further than our home offices.

Flexible and remote ways of working have been in place ever since, brought about on a global scale by the COVID-19 pandemic and changing migration patterns due to Brexit, demanding that we find ways to work across borders and language barriers? 

The solution lies in remote interpreting: making use of existing technology to interpret via telephone or video conferencing software. Here are 5 reasons to integrate remote interpreting into your user experience today:

1) Time efficiency

While the old adage that ‘time is money’ does not necessarily apply to every business in the same way, it’s certainly not wrong. We’ll always maintain that face-to-face interpreting is the gold standard, but there are plenty of occasions when we’ll openly admit that the gold standard is overkill.

Routine or brief conversations, for example, could easily be translated over the phone. At Word360, we use our leading edge software solution, Wordskii, to combine our service offerings and allow near-instant access to an interpreter.

This means your interpreter is there for exactly the amount of time you need them, and no longer, maximising time efficiency and freeing you and your employees for the next task.

2) Cost efficiency

As we’ve discussed, it’s not always necessary to use the gold standard of interpreting, or to pay the gold standard price that comes with it. Remote interpreting involves no travel expenses and is much simpler in its setup, meaning that it is often available at a more economic price point.

By balancing your interpreting needs across all of the options available to you, using each when it’s most suited, it’s possible to maximise both time and cost efficiency, while still allowing you to operate across language barriers as you always have, or perhaps wish to.

3) Avoid travel

In a COVID-19 affected, post-Brexit world, travel is not the everyday occurrence for businesses that it once was. With strikes, delay and restrictions exist left right and centre, some for safety and some as a result of our new world standing after our exit from the EU.

Because remote interpreting does not involve any travel, these various restrictions, complications, and additional costs do not factor in. Operating remotely in this way means you never have to concern yourself with fluctuating travel rules and newly complicated borders.

2) On-demand

Our utilisation of industry-leading Wordskii software allows us to connect you with an interpreter in mere minutes, and because our services are available 24/7, you’ll never be without an interpreter when you need one.

Having an interpreter on-hand whenever you need means that there doesn’t need to be any planning or forethought involved in communicating across language barriers, making you more flexible and able to deal with whatever life throws your way.

1) Safety

As well as our work with the private sector, we work heavily with the NHS to help them deliver crucial services that’re accessible to all. A huge list of NHS trusts and organisations are now using remote interpreting to allow them to cope with the huge demand they’re currently facing, and to do so safely.

Because remote interpreting is, by definition, remote, it’s much safer under current circumstances as it reduces the number of unnecessary interactions between people in the workplace.

Meetings, conferences, and everyday conversations can still take place, only via a video link or a phone call, meaning business can go ahead as normal.

In the current paradigm where travel is difficult and costly, efficiency is everything. Keeping staff safe and maximising their efficiency is crucial to productivity, and adaptations made now will provide advances in processes and overall user experience.