Do business in Taiwan

Do business in Taiwan
Because we don’t have enough time to mention about Taiwanese culture In the class, I want to add some Taiwanese different culture now and if you are interested in doing business in Taiwan or visiting Taiwan, you have to know about those.

Politics
Like many countries, there are two leading parties in Taiwan, KMT and DPP. In 1949, KMT drew off from China to Taiwan so the relationship between KMT and China is more closed. In contrast, DPP are composed by the people who have lived originally in Taiwan. As a result, people support DPP believe Taiwan is a independent country and if China wants to do business with Taiwan but wants Taiwan to scarify the right being a country, DPP would rather just do business with other countries. Another interesting phenomenon is most of people living in the north part of Taiwan support KMT and most of people living in the south part of Taiwan support DPP. People in Taiwan like to talk about politics even through TV stations have different political tendency. However, it is not a wise action to talk politics with other people especially if you want to do business with Taiwanese people.

Swarm effect
Taiwan is a small inland so Taiwanese people all have international perspective. Most of people had been to other countries. This is totally different from United State and China. As a result, we like a sponge which can gather all kind of different culture or information in other countries especially United State, Japan. People in Taiwan like novel things and food. However, we are also easy to lose the patience in new things or food. For example, several years ago, egg tart is so popular in Taiwan. You can see there are always a long line waiting for egg tart everyday because egg tart need a long time to bake. The egg tart stores appeared everywhere in the street. But after one year, people don’t like it anymore. Of course, those stores all closed.

If you want to do business in Taiwan, you have to know if your business is popular, many competitors will show off and share the markets in the short time. Moreover, people in Taiwan always lose the patience to a industry. How to sustain your business is the most important thing.

Culture VS Gourmet

Bubble tea..
Bubble tea, one of Taiwanese gourmet, is so popular in Taiwan. No matter during summer or winter, you can see many people in the street walking and holding a cup of bubble tea. Some people even drink a couple of cups a day. However, there is a store selling bubble tea in Chicago. The owner coming from Taiwan brought this unique snake with Taiwanese culture as same tasty as in Taiwan. This store has totally different fate. It located in a flourish area where there are all kind of restaurants from different countries such as Japan, India, Thailand…and so on. Most of the residents living here are young and can accept novel things. However, this store just opened one year and it will be closed. WHY? When my class talking to do business in Taiwan and my team treated every classmate a cup of bubble, many classmates who don’t come from Asian drink this in the first time and all classmates like it. As a result, most young people like the bubble tea but why the store selling bubble tea will be closed?

Food market s different from other market
If you want to export your local food to other country, the most important thing is if people in that country can accept unique flavor or not especially Eastern food culture is totally different from Western food culture. For example, people in U.S. like sweet food and cold beverages even it is snowing out. Moreover, food market is competitive. Local restaurant has their dominant position and there are also many competitors coming from the counties near your country. Do your store have any advantage such as low price which can attract people can try it? Company cannot use the same business model selling food in other countries.

The Market of Traditional Taiwanese Food
Taiwan open the door and welcome Chinese visitors in this month. People coming from China can travel independently to Taiwan and don’t have to go with a group.
Most of them like Taiwanese snake and traditional Taiwanese food so they will buy couples of pineapple cake when they go back to China. As a result, this humble golden cube creates 3.5 million income every year. Since pineapple cake is popular to Chinese people, why the businessman don’t want to open stores in China?

Customer Service VS Outsource

Customer service department is a very important department in every company because the people whom customers contact with the company in the first time are always customer service specialists. They provide any information about the company and products. They have to deal with any complaints and requests from customers. They also present the image and culture of a company. However, such important department is no longer part of a company in many companies. Why? Because most of companies in developed countries want to save the human costs, they outsource their customer service department to local companies or some companies in developing countries which specially dedicate to customer service business, especially in tele-customer service. Company don’t have to recruit employees and spend much money and time to train them. Professional customer service companies have more experience to deal with all kinds of customers with lower costs.

source:http://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/2010/06/09/should-companies-outsource-hr-to-be-more-strategic-or-to-save-money

Many U.S. companies will outsource customer service department to the company in India. The reasons are as follow. First, English is the national language. Most of Indian can speak fluent English. Moreover, Indian people like American movies, music and TV shows. So they also know some American culture. How do Americans talk to each other, what kind of words Americans will use. Second, human costs in India is so low. Compared to the living standard in India, the living standard in United state is about 7-8 time. For example, people spend 5-6 dollars for a happy meal in McDonald in US but it costs only less than one dollar in India. Average salary in customer service industry in India is 6000 dollar a year but that in United State is 60000 dollars. Company spend the same amount of money which can hire ten people in India but only can hire one person in United State. Of course, company will chose India. Finally, employees in customer service are easy to be trained. Customer service doesn’t like R&D need very long time to train a person having professional knowledge. Company can teach employees what the products are and how to talk to their customers. Normally, there is a SOP in customer service. Employees only follow the rule to deal with all customers’ need.

The same situation happened in China. Many companies whose customers speaking Chinese outsource their customer service department to China. Additional, most of their target markets are in Asia, the same time zone. Companies can care less about different time will bring some trouble. Since outsourcing in emerging countries are so popular now, If you want to create a customer service company in emerging countries, what should you pay attention to? First, pronunciation. Even though speaking the same language, it is easy to distinguish the native and the foreign. Most of customers will feel weird and don’t trust the customer service specialist coming from other countries, especially coming from the countries with lower living standard. Fortunately, customers can’t see specialists’ faces and only hear their voice. As a result, only customer specialists can be trained like the local person and know about local language words, most customers will not discover their specialists coming from other countries. Furthermore, understand people’s working habit and culture in emerging countries. Management is a professional knowledge. It is difficult to manage a team especially the team members coming from different country. There is a old saying that the key to manage a person is manage his heart. In order to understand what your subordinates are thinking, you have to know about his/her culture and personality.

Next time, when you call the customer service and the people answering you are coming from other countries, you don’t have to feel uncomfortable. This is popular and with the globalization and the development of internet, there is no boundary between every country.