Going Global: Implementing Multilingual Support for Global SaaS Businesses

Imagine a user from Spain encountering an issue with your app. They reach out to your support team, only to discover there’s no help available in their native language. They might feel frustrated or disappointed—and who could blame them?

If you target your SaaS platform internationally, you’ve probably done a fair amount of work to localize your marketing. You may offer a website in multiple languages, or accept payments in different currencies.

Implementing multilingual support is just as critical. 

With 54% of customers sharing their negative experiences with at least five other people, a single poor support interaction can harm your SaaS brand’s reputation and cost you business in a new market.

Why global SaaS businesses should offer multilingual support

If you’re thinking about implementing multilingual support for your SaaS business, there are three compelling reasons to make it a priority:

1. Customer loyalty. Research from Intercom shows that over 50% of customers are more likely to remain loyal, tolerate issues with a product, and be willing to wait longer for a response if they can communicate with support in their native language.

2. Higher conversion rates. Providing pre-purchase support in a prospect’s language can be the deciding factor for those on the fence. When a potential customer from Poland browses your home page in Polish and gets a question about the features, they will likely reach out to support in Polish. If they can’t get a reply in their own language, it will lead to frustration and a lost sale. In fact, 29% of businesses say they’ve lost customers because they don’t offer multilingual support.

3. Competitive edge.  When 70% of end users would rather choose companies that provide support in their native language, offering multilingual support can set you apart from competitors. Which is the smarter strategy for growth: continually chasing new leads, or delighting existing users so they continue to renew? With multilingual support, it’s easier to keep customers who are happy to renew their subscription over and over.

6 ways to provide multilingual customer support

Now that we’ve covered why multilingual customer support is essential, let’s look at the six most common options to get started with it.

1. Hire agents or contractors in other countries

The most obvious way to provide multilingual support is by hiring local-language agents for every market. These agents not only speak the local language but are also familiar with the regional culture, which helps them relate to users and offer a better service.

However, this approach might not always be optimal. It can get expensive depending on the market. For example, if you’re catering to Nordic countries, where labor costs are high and work regulations include generous PTO and sick leave policies, you might need to hire more staff than you would for a U.S.-based team.

Additionally, if you’re hiring these agents as employees of your company, then you’ll need to set up operations locally for each market and hire managers who speak the local language.

While this can be a significant investment, it may be worth it for the enhanced customer experience — if your volume justifies it. Larger businesses like Zalando often choose this approach. However, for smaller SaaS start-ups, setting up entire departments in each language doesn’t make much sense due to the lower volume. 

A related approach would be to hire part-time contractors in any country you need. This brings flexibility and decreases the complexity of setting up local operations in each market, but also decreases the accountability and level of control you’ll have over your contracted team members. 

2. Hire bilingual or multilingual agents

Another approach is hiring bilingual or multilingual agents in your home country. 

Hiring Spanish-speaking agents in the U.S., for example, can cost the same or only slightly more than hiring agents who only speak English. Other languages will likely cost more. But it’ll still be more efficient than hiring two separate agents—especially if you don’t have enough support volume to justify both hires.

This strategy is great for smaller start-ups that aren’t ready to expand and open offices in multiple locations. However, larger companies like Uber also hire bilingual agents to support their diverse customer base.

If you decide to hire multilingual agents in your home country, keep in mind that with target markets spread across different countries and time zones, simply providing support in local languages might not be enough. Ideally, you’ll want to offer support during each region’s business hours.

Otherwise, your European customers may end up contacting your team during their working day, only to receive a response when they’re already asleep. When the issue requires some back-and-forth communication, there’s a high risk that the resolution could stretch across multiple days, negatively impacting the customer experience.

If you’ve ever been in this situation as a customer, you know how quickly frustration can turn into the urge to start looking for an alternative provider.

Since users typically expect a resolution within a day via email and within 10 minutes via live chat, meeting their expectations becomes impossible if your office is closed when they reach out.

3. Find a great outsourcing company

If you don’t have the resources to hire in-house agents or contractors for each language you cater to, another option is to partner with a local company specializing in customer support services. Leveraging their customer service and language expertise, you can free up internal resources to focus on other areas of the business.

Alternatively, you can explore nearshore or offshore outsourcing options:

• For example, nearshore options in Mexico or Colombia often provide both English and Spanish support.
• In the Philippines, many agents are bilingual, fluently speaking English and other popular languages, such as Spanish and French.
• Similarly, Eastern Europe is a great region to consider for other European languages, as many customer service workers there are fluent in multiple languages—including English, German, French, and Italian.

Outsourcing customer support is cost-effective, making it a popular choice for both growing start-ups and established tech companies. Most companies see at least a 10% cost reduction when outsourcing overseas, sometimes much more. Additionally, tapping into overseas markets provides access to a larger talent pool.

Outsourced teams can also support various schedules, including 24/7 coverage, and handle post-marketing campaign spikes, seasonal variations, major feature releases, and other high-variance factors.

And the quality of support is often higher with outsourcing companies because of their extensive experience in customer support operations. They can set up streamlined processes and manage team performance effectively, leading to faster response times, higher customer satisfaction, and more efficient scaling.

Take Advent eModal as an example. Facing growing support volume but lacking the budget to expand their USA-based staff, they partnered with Peak Support. Starting with Tier 1 support, we gradually earned the client’s trust, leading to their recent decision to outsource Tier 2 support as well. As a result, they’ve seen remarkable improvements in core KPIs:

• Response time decreased from up to 45 hours to approximately 15 minutes
• Average CSAT scores went from 50% to 90%

Due to their broad range of experience, BPOs are often skilled at identifying opportunities to improve your user experience—including areas you may have overlooked or been too busy to tackle.

4. Use AI translations

Smaller start-ups often choose not to offer multilingual support because the ticket volume in each language doesn’t justify the investment required to hire agents and maintain operations for multiple markets. After all, in-browser page translation makes it quite easy for end users across the globe to navigate your app even if you only support English on your site.

Additionally, with the advancement of AI tools, AI-powered translations are often as good as, or even better than, those provided by non-native speakers.

So, instead of hiring dedicated native speakers for every market, you can create a process for agents to use Google Translate (though this often results in inaccurate translations that compromise service quality) or integrate more reliable and efficient translation services, like Lokalise, to enhance your team’s existing language skills.

Most help desks offer built-in translation capabilities as well. Platforms like Intercom, Help Scout, and Zendesk come with translation services (depending on your product tier). If you’re only providing email or chat support, these solutions might be sufficient to enable your English-speaking agents to translate inquiries and respond in each customer’s preferred language.

However, like any AI feature, translations may occasionally be inaccurate. To mitigate this, ensure that your QA reviewers are familiar with the languages you support. You can also monitor user feedback related to translations to address any concerns promptly.

Adding a brief note to every response stating that the text has been translated by a machine can also help manage expectations and minimize the impact of any incorrect translations or word usage.

If you notice a drop in CSAT after implementing AI translations, you may need to consider a different AI service provider (if translations are low-quality) or review your agents’ workflow to identify any issues.

5. Localize your FAQ pages and help centers

Another effective way to provide multilingual support is by creating a comprehensive knowledge base and making your support content available in multiple languages.

When customers can find answers to their questions on their own, it’s a win-win for both them and your support team—customers get the help they need immediately, in the language they prefer, while your support agents can focus on more complex inquiries.

From my experience in SaaS, a robust knowledge base can deflect up to 90% of help page visits, providing visitors with the answers they need without having to open a ticket with the support team.

Another added benefit for the business is resource savings—Gartner reports that resolving an issue through self-service alone can cost 80x less than a live interaction, even when there’s only one step involved in the ticket resolution.

When creating a multilingual knowledge base, it’s important to use high-quality translations to ensure the information is accurate and easy to understand. You can hire professional human translators or use automatic website translation tools like Weglot, which is particularly useful if you frequently update your app and release new features requiring regular content updates.

6. Configure multilingual chatbots

You’ve likely interacted with AI chatbots on popular SaaS sites, where they attempt to handle common questions, like password reset requests, without human intervention.

They won’t be helpful with tickets that require accessing user accounts, logs, or billing history, but chatbots can effectively manage your most common FAQ queries.

Instead of continuously expanding your team, you can deploy a chatbot to handle a portion of support requests in various languages. This enables users to receive quick answers in their preferred language without waiting for a human agent.

One option is to implement a rule-based chatbot for common issues across different languages. Some bots automatically detect a user’s language, while others allow customers to choose their preferred language before accessing a list of topics the bot can assist with, such as account settings, subscription questions, and other feature-specific inquiries.

Alternatively, you can deploy a conversational AI chatbot that generates answers based on your help center content. If you have an up-to-date, localized knowledge base, setting this up can be straightforward. Most tools require only a few clicks to get started—just select the bot’s personality and give it access to your knowledge base.

In either case, make sure it’s easy for users to reach a human agent when needed. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting stuck in endless chatbot loops when you need urgent help with an application.

Additionally, when working with clients to create, refine, and implement AI and technology solutions, we’ve found it valuable to evaluate your chatbot just as you would a human team member. You can assess bot conversations with the same QA scorecard you use for human agents, providing a clear benchmark to understand how bot interactions impact customer experience.

Multilingual support strategy to set your business apart

No matter the size of your business, offering multilingual support is essential for successfully capturing new markets. By leveraging AI tools, optimizing your content, and building a skilled multilingual customer support team, you can provide a seamless experience for users across different cultures and languages.

These all require effort and resources, but in the long run, delivering robust multilingual support will boost customer retention and increase revenue.

If you need help with hiring and managing a multilingual support team for a SaaS product, schedule a call with Peak Support today. We’ll help you find the best solution to grow your international business.