In 2008, a Top 3 U.S. wireless telecom service provider wanted to rapidly accelerate its market growth among Spanish-speaking residents.
The company—which serves postpaid, prepaid and wholesale markets in the U.S. and Latin America—identified several strategic goals for this critical initiative:
- Reach, engage and convert Spanish-speaking customers
- Provide a fully localized user experience with a translated customer portal
- Enable Latin American staff, using a localized employee portal, to provide customer support within their respective markets
- Leverage this fully translated CX as a key differentiator against competitors
The Challenge
The company wanted to solve several important challenges as it examined translation solutions.
One concern was the rapid speed at which its creative agency published online promotions and support information. The agency often published several content updates in a single day to the company’s English website and private portals.
This accelerated schedule easily outpaces the rudimentary capabilities of most website translation solutions because:
- Their content-detection technologies can’t keep up with fast-paced updates
- This means new content isn’t identified and compiled for translation in a timely manner
- Also, content may not be detected at all due to the vendor’s technical limitations
- It can take weeks to translate, review and publish this new content
By the time the content is localized and published, time-sensitive promotions or product updates may have expired—or altogether removed from the site. These inefficiencies generate major delays, create a lousy UX for buyers and staff, and waste time and money.
Further, the coding of the portals was so complex, it made localization practically impossible for the company’s internal IT and Marketing teams.
The Impact
The company was bleeding out on opportunity. It had served Spanish-speaking customers and employees in the U.S. and Latin America for years, but was clearly providing an unsatisfying user experience.
Things went from bad to worse when key competitors debuted localized websites and portals for their own Spanish-speaking U.S. customers.