The Intersection of Retail and Language
The internet has made the world feel smaller by connecting people from all over the globe seamlessly. This accessibility has rapidly evolved the retail landscape beyond national borders, opening doors for retailers to increase their customer bases and global footprints. However, these opportunities do not come without roadblocks, with one of the biggest challenges being language barriers.
The Capital One Shopping Research 2024 report found that nearly 32 percent of U.S. online shoppers have purchased from an international retailer in the past year. There's an urgent need for retailers to prioritize effective multilingual strategies to remain competitive and build trust in diverse international markets.
Language Support and Customer Experience
Customers overwhelmingly prefer to shop in their own language, with nearly three-quarters (72.1 percent) primarily browsing websites in their native language. To ensure your retail business is providing the best customer experience possible, it's critical to provide customer service in customers’ languages of choice. Exceptional customer experiences are no longer just a “nice to have” option for a business. Exceeding expectations is the baseline if you want to succeed in the long term. Offering multilingual shopping options is crucial for retailers.
Despite the importance of multilingual support, many businesses fall short in this area. Even an industry leader like Amazon.com, which supports 16 different languages for customer service, barely scratches the surface given the world’s linguistic diversity of over 7,000 languages. This gap in language accessibility can significantly impact sales and customer retention — nearly a third (29 percent) of companies lacking adequate multilingual support have reported customer losses because of language barriers.
Businesses that do invest in multilingual support, however, reap substantial rewards. Customer loyalty sees a marked increase when support is offered in a client’s native language, with 70 percent of customers reporting stronger brand loyalty in such cases. This bolstered loyalty is particularly valuable given that retaining existing customers is far more cost effective than acquiring new ones — selling to an established customer is five times less expensive than selling to a new one. New shoppers are also less likely to make a purchase than existing customers. Implementing robust multilingual support can improve both CSAT scores and financial performance.
The online retail space is becoming increasingly globalized, and it's now table stakes to be able to serve a multilingual customer base. Partnering with a real-time translation platform will set your business up for success in the long term, as the world is only going to continue to get “smaller.” Businesses that fail to meet these multilingual expectations will be at a major disadvantage. Meeting multilingual users’ needs is a smart business strategy that will help drive lasting growth and capture untapped markets in the retail space.
Viviana Bertinetto is chief customer officer at Language I/O, a real-time translation platform.
Prior to working for Language I/O, Chief Customer Officer Viviana Bertinetto spent ten years working in the language industry for various language service providers managing projects and vendors. Throughout her experiences, Viviana has worked closely with her customers to automate their processes and fully support their localization efforts. Viviana is passionate about working for a woman-owned company and places high importance on women being successful in the tech industry. She was born and raised in Italy and has a Master’s in Foreign Languages and Translation from the University of Turin. Viviana also speaks Spanish and Italian.
