Omniva to Discontinue Russian-Language Customer Service
Starting from 1 November, Omniva will discontinue its Russian-language customer service in Estonia. This means that Omniva’s customer support, website, self-service portal, mobile app, and parcel machines will be available in two languages – Estonian and English.
The number of customers who require Russian-language assistance because they do not speak Estonian or English has decreased. At the same time, the quality of machine translation has improved significantly and the use of Russian-language web environments has declined. Therefore, maintaining separate Russian-language service lines is no longer economically reasonable.
“This does not mean that Omniva employees will stop communicating in Russian alltogether. If our customer service representative speaks Russian, they will gladly continue to assist customers in that language. All employees in our postal points in Ida-Viru County speak Russian, and communication in the region’s most common language will continue,” explained Sven Kukemelk, Acting Chief Commercial Officer of Omniva.
“We will also continue to respond to written inquiries in Russian, but replies will be provided in Estonian or English. Today, machine translation tools are advanced enough that, whether it’s a written response or a web page, anyone can easily understand the content by using automatic translation into their native language,” Kukemelk added.
No layoffs are associated with this change, as the customer support specialists who have handled Russian-language lines will be reassigned to Estonian- and English-language lines.
With this step, Omniva isaligning its approach across all three home countries. Russian-language customer service was discontinued in Latvia in 2023, and it has never been offered in Lithuania. Thus, in Latvia, Lithuania, and now also Estonia, Omniva provides customer service in the national language and in English as the universal international language of communication.