Firms Find Profits in Bridging Language Gap : Services: An increasing number of companies are offering multilingual customer services as a way of gaining competitive advantage.

When Ford Motor Co. late last year introduced a Spanish-language version of a buying guide called “Car and Truck Buying Made Easier,” it was accepting an old adage with a popular new twist: “Money talks, but it speaks different languages.”

Ford executives hope that their new 58-page guide, including data on all cars as well as specific Ford models, lures Spanish-speaking Latinos to their showrooms.

“It’s designed to increase our sales to Hispanics,” said Peter D. Olsen, Ford’s assistant manager of special markets. “If you look at southern Florida, Texas, California and the entire Pacific Coast, you can see a tremendous (Latino) market.”

The Ford buying guide--advertised in Spanish-language publications available in Los Angeles and other cities with large Latino populations--is one of the most recent in a wave of new multilingual customer services offered by companies with operations in California, where Spanish and many Asian languages are commonly spoken and other languages, such as Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew, are also heard.

To be sure, multilingualism in the California marketplace is not new. Local minority-owned enterprises and multinational firms have a tradition of advertising in Spanish- and Asian-language media as part of an effort to reach Californians who speak little or no English. In addition, some California utilities have provided customer services in Spanish for years.

Now, however, other types of businesses--including manufacturers, retailers, banks and insurance, accounting and public relations firms--are beginning to establish multilingual customer services that go beyond mere advertising. Multilingual services are provided at the business site, over telephone lines and via commercial literature. Meanwhile, a number of California utilities are expanding their non-English programs.

The trend pleases proponents of commercial multilingualism who say it was a long time in coming, and some continue to criticize other companies for failing to bridge the language gap. These advocates also say American business--including firms with multilingual services--should find other ways to reach out to ethnic communities. These businesses should boost hiring and promotion of minorities and purchase more goods and services from minority contractors.

Some of the multilingual services cost thousands of dollars; but companies say these services generate new revenue. In some cases, additional revenue derived from non-English-speaking consumers can give a company a critical edge, observed Carlos Garcia, vice president of Research Resources, an Agoura Hills firm that conducts marketing research on Latinos.

“People don’t have to be told to take off their coat when it’s hot,” Garcia said. “Companies are responding with programs because there is money to be made.”

Acknowledging the business world’s basic obligations to reach new markets for profit, groups generally opposed to bilingualism in schools and government offices have a more benign position on corporate multilingualism. U.S. English, the national organization that helped organize and finance a 1986 state ballot measure to make English the official language of California, is not crusading against multilingual customer services, said Stanley Diamond, chairman of the Washington-based group.

Diamond, a San Francisco resident, said multilingual customer services tend to perpetuate linguistic “divisiveness and separation” in California. However, he said, U.S. English is much more concerned about the use of Spanish in schools and government offices.

“Our official position is to let the marketplace decide what languages will be used,” Diamond said.

California’s marketplace is ethnically and linguistically varied. About 6.58 million, or 23%, of the state’s 28.3 million residents are Latino, according to a 1988 Census Bureau tally.

There are no recent government counts of the Asian population, but the 1980 census showed about 1.2 million Asians, or about 5%, in a state population of 23.6 million. Some researchers predict that Southeast Asians will account for 12% of California’s population by the year 2000.

Surveys show that one-third of the state’s Latino population speak only Spanish. Another third speak Spanish and English, but a substantial portion of that bilingual group prefers to do business in Spanish, surveys indicate.

As for California’s Asian population, 6% speak no English and 21% say they do not speak English well, according to studies cited by the Asian Pacific Legal Center of Southern California.

“We’re seeing a number of companies beginning to hire a diverse (bilingual) work force to communicate with a diverse customer base,” said Stewart Kwoh, director of the legal center.

Pacific Bell is no newcomer to bilingual services but lately has expanded them. The company late last year unveiled a bilingual Hispanic Business Center to handle requests of Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs.

Other bilingual programs are to be expanded soon. GTE California, which opened a customer service telephone line for Spanish speakers last March, plans to open a similar center for speakers of an Asian language early this year, spokesman Larry Cox said.

Cox said the language centers are not designed to be profitable. However, he said, the service is producing unexpectedly high numbers of new service orders. “It’s gratifying to see it meeting a need and stimulating new business at the same time,” Cox said.

Bilingualism also pays at the Los Angeles office of Fleishman Hillard Inc. The Spanish-language division at the public relations firm’s Los Angeles office cranks out press releases and other promotional materials for a number of major corporations and institutions.

J. C. Penney also hopes to generate new revenue by communicating in Spanish. The retailer recently introduced a colorful sales brochure, in English and Spanish, showing dresses and other gift items suitable for quinceanera, a traditional celebration that marks a girl’s 15th birthday.

Bank of America recently launched a program whereby 260 offices--one-third of its branch network--provide Spanish brochures on its services.

The new services and promotions cost “hundreds of thousands” of dollars, but the campaign is paying off, according to K. Shelly Porges, Bank of America’s senior vice president of retail product management. Porges said deposit growth at the targeted branches exceeds the growth rate at other branches, a reversal of previous trends. She said the bank is considering plans for publishing similar materials in Chinese. Employees at a Beverly Hills branch speak Farsi and Hebrew.

Security Pacific is trying to accommodate the Spanish-speaking market via automated teller machines. The Los Angeles-based firm several months ago said it would become the first major bank in the state to provide ATMs that communicate in Spanish and English. The bilingual machines are being placed in 70 locations in Southern California.

Pleased with the response, Security Pacific executives plan to develop Japanese- and Chinese-language ATMs.

Banks are becoming more responsive to Asian-language speakers because banks owned and operated by Asians have been moving into Los Angeles and picking up the business of many who are not comfortable speaking English, according to Kwoh of the Asian Pacific Legal Center.

Kwoh welcomes corporate efforts to communicate to non-English-speaking communities. However, the line separating multilingualism and exploitation can sometimes be a fine one, he said.

For example, Kwoh said, life insurance companies have been on the leading edge of multilingualism, hiring bilingual Asian-Americans to sell policies throughout the state. Such practices are commercially astute but are not always a sign of tolerance, Kwoh said.

Specifically, Kwoh said the legal center recently received a complaint from a Chinese-American insurance agent. The agent, one of 15 Asian-Americans at the firm, said his employer had encouraged Chinese, Korean and Filipino employees to speak Asian languages when policyholders and potential clients don’t speak English. However, company supervisors prohibited the same employees from communicating with each other in Asian languages at the office, Kwoh said.

The prohibition was lifted when the legal center confronted company officials about the policy, Kwoh said.

Providers of automobile insurance have been slow to respond, making little effort to communicate with Spanish speakers, according to John Gamboa, executive director of the San Francisco-based Latino Issues Forum, a civil rights coalition. “They’re using language as an excuse not to provide proper service,” Gamboa said.

The Assn. of California Insurance Cos. disputes that position. Major providers of auto insurance publish bills and brochures in Spanish and, when necessary, send Spanish-speaking representatives to handle claim adjustments, said George Tye, vice president of the trade group, which represents 40 providers of property-casualty and automobile insurance.

The Spanish-language capabilities of San Francisco-based Pacific Gas & Electric also are at issue. Gamboa says PG&E; does not have enough Spanish-speaking customer service representatives and has asked its executives to step up efforts to communicate with Latinos.

“PG&E; serves a huge Latino community and they don’t serve them well at all,” Gamboa said.

But Archie Murray, PG&E;’s supervisor of residential services, said the utility publishes Spanish-language brochures that provide safety tips and background on services. PG&E; may also open a customer service telephone line for Spanish speakers, he said.

After hearing complaints from Latino activists, the utility’s executives recently decided to survey residents in large Latino communities in the Modesto area to determine their needs, Murray said.