How globalization strategies are failing to meet international audience
Three use cases on how web assets management and internationalization have been wrongly implemented by global companies.
In this article, I will analyze one common practice when it comes to deploy local branches across the world and define web assets management strategy.
I will introduce how 3 companies implemented such strategy, what they did wrong for internationalization matters and what they can do about it.
Here are the 3 use cases:
- The Portuguese branch of Leroy Merlin — A global retailer in construction and home appliances.
- The Portuguese branch of Dyson — Popular for its amazing vacuum cleaners.
- And Amazon’s Online shopping Spanish branch
This is an outsider’s perspective, I don’t feed strong opinion against these companies for that since they might have had other issues to deal with upon delivering these strategies in a corporate environment.
Dyson.pt
Let start slowly with our first exemple, Dyson.
Running such a business globally is not an easy piece of cake. Not only they have to deal with supply chains, local regulations and possible competition with other Dyson branches like any global retailer would, but they also have to partner with local vendors and asset recovery services to ensure a good customer experience and proper warranty policies.
For these reasons, opening a local branch with controlled autonomy makes sense and is understandably what Dyson decided to do.
Dyson.pt as a declaration of accessibility which is actually better than the US branch’s version in that sense that they made it clear what they consider a part of their effort in accessibility and how to provide feedback or get help from them if anything goes wrong while the US version only makes a bold statement.
They also seem to have an interesting pdf support to provide accessible assets and started to look at the issues caused by video content and the way they use HTML ids, I like the transparency of their effort and it tells about the character of the people who built the website and the services it supports.
When you connect to Dyson from using any domain extensions, they have an easy to find UI to help you switch from a country to another and they even support different languages for countries with multiple official languages like Belgium.
I live in Portugal so the branch that will likely help me is the Portuguese branch. It important to speak to someone who actually can help you to make sure you don’t lose time in bureaucracy which is often the case if you contact the wrong branch in many companies.
Internationals like me have learned it the hard way, the place where you buy, the one where you live, and the one where you get customer support might differ and you might think it all comes to one company to support it but it often happen to be an issue gathering many different branches in order to be solved and all of them might have different work organisation, which translate in a huge administrative burden for them and for you as a customer. This is even worst when it includes local coupons and promotions but I won’t go too far in the globalization’s industry jokes.
Going to Dyson.pt the only language available is Portuguese, the website and its content are localized under pt-PT locale which makes the website hard to access for non Portuguese speaker who would need the services of Dyson in Portugal.
Not only this causes an accessibility issue but it is also a missed opportunity to sell products and services to a growing market of migrants living in Portugal.
According to Schengen News, Portugal recorded one million foreigners in 2023 — the highest figure ever recorded.
This means close to 10% of Portuguese market is made of foreigners, this has raised for the last five years and is very likely to keep growing in the future.
See Portuguese’s national statistics Institute report(Though is fair to assume a lot of them are Brazilians and can understand written Portugal’s Portuguese - but they usually face issues with the spoken one which is very different from Brazil’s Portuguese)
This is really sad because when you dig a bit more, you’ll find that the product’s catalog actually reacts to search inputs in english and display the product you are looking for, so the hardest part (CRM and product management) is technically ready to support local branches to feature different languages.
Content seems to be centralized and Dyson features a limited catalog of products from their own brand, which means they have full length to use a polycentric content localization strategy, or to speak in english, to provide worldwide translations for each products in each local branches regardless of the logistic, partnerships and regulations concerns they face.
They also provide a chat support which might be harder to deploy globally since they would need to establish cross branches partnerships to ensure support in all supported languages, or to define their own languages to support and hire the proper talents to do so.
LeroyMerlin.pt
Leroy Merlin is a bit different because they sell products from other brands as well. You can buy tools, furnitures, construction materials and components,.. They are the go to place when it comes to renovating a house, upgrading a garden or repairing day to day stuff.
The company offers these products trough an online catalog or in store, but they also offer services such as delivery, orders pick up, installations, construction projects, cutting, leasing, fidelity program,…
Therefore, it is also mandatory for them to deploy local branches in order to provide their whole variety of products and services at full extent.
The company ensures a great customer experience and I never had any issue to get support in English on site (I live in Almada, right in front of the Lisbon where you’ll hear more English, French or Russian speakers than actual Portuguese). It’s a bit more complicated to get support online but also hardly required and I usually figure out.
The online catalog also supports English input, though I suspect it is limited to products with actual English description in the backend, but the only language otherwise available is Portuguese and you’ll often get redirected to the Portuguese website when trying to use another one (which makes sense for operation purposes, even though it’s a bad practice on the web as I explained in my last article)
Where the Dyson’s chat support would redirect to a human in case the chatbot fails to help, Leroy Merlin opted for a fencing design where the chatbot is unable to support multiple languages or redirect to a customer service for written support.
You can instead try to contact them by phone but that’s a unnecessary burden and it is very stressful, first we can expect a responder in Portuguese which is itself often designed to block foreigners out by many companies upon asking them to dial numbers to get to the right person… but in a language they don’t understand.
It is also annoying because phone conversations often lack quality and are hard to hear, understand, memorized and cannot rely on common translation tools to avoid language barriers, just like emails would do.
They might also cause privacy issues or oppose legal affairs due to their obfuscated design, for all these reasons, internationals or people with hearing, memory or focus impairment will despise calling and do everything they can to get a proper written support.
I would say I never got much annoyed by this because the people working in store provide all the help I need and the service is always great, but it also require to allocate free time and pay for transportation which might not be okay if you simply want to update a piece of data or get a simple information.
This kind of implementation of chatbots is therefore counter productive to an accessibility and privacy driven digitization program and actually complicates Leroy Merlin’s appointments management since they can decide to move you appointment/delivery dates for operations reasons to a date you might not be available, the customer then have to quickly find some time to go in store or get it done trough the website or a call, which is honestly a bit painful.
Amazon.es
Amazon.es is more particular because it is a regional branch covering operations in the Iberian peninsula but also Portugal and Spain’s overseas territories.
I believe they also cover Andorra and I have no idea how they set up in Gibraltar which is a UK territory at the border of Spain and Morocco where natives can express many different national identities.
When you receive an order from Amazon in Portugal, you’ll get it delivered by companies working for Amazon’s Spanish branch and the same goes when you’ll have to speak with customer support.
You’ll have access to products from all around the world and can rely on Amazon logistics to eventually bring what you ordered in front of your door, no matter where it comes from and where you are having it delivered.
According to Sobelnet, Amazon now stands at the top of the Transport Topics’ 2024 Top 100 Logistics Companies list, therefore it is safe to assume they can deliver all the products of their global catalog no matter where it is stored while insuring all the taxes and administrative burden are efficiently dealt with.
https://www.sobelnet.com/amazon-secures-leading-position-in-top-100-logistics-rankings/
One thing about Amazon’s strategy is really weird, Amazon.com seems to support Portuguese and Spanish languages (probably for the latam region) but the exact sam website under Amazon.es only supports Spanish and Portuguese even though its customers might not speak it.
I first noticed several issues with this behavior not as a migrant but as a traveller in Spain.
I wanted to order check on an order and I kept being redirected to amazon.es which was not what I needed, this issue seemed to have been solved thankfully, automatic redirection is usually not a good option.
It’s getting messy when you have an issue with an order an need to speak with them because the customer center hardly supports English… or even Portuguese !
It seems up to the support agents to find an hospitable colleague able to speak profesionnal English to provide support. I don’t know if these people benefits from a bonus as English speakers or if they are even allowed to help and risk to communicate inaccurate informations but it definitely feels like they don’t have a proper governance to ensure someone in this branch or another can take the call and provide support.
I never worked for Amazon so I might be wrong but that’s the feeling I have as a customer.
The good thing with this strategy is that the people who support you are on the same timezone and same season as you are so information can quickly flow between the customer, the service center and the partners handling the delivery and they will overall match your energy.
As soon as the language barrier has been cross, you’ll remember that Amazon is very good at its job, selling you products, protect you from scams and deliver the product at your door or eventually refund you if the partner messed up.
I hope you liked this little article and found these use cases relevant, as a migrant in Portugal, I experience such issues on a weekly basis from both private and public sector.
It might look like I express them very lightly, but internationalization is not that easy and you can’t just expect anyone to learn it without experiencing it as a person.
Because it is a really important matter that is not well taught at school or in business training, I decided to advocate for it and show that we did not yet achieve actual internationalization with the current technologies and knowledge already widely spread like i18n.
To believe we did is to keep our services exclusive and not get ready to solve global issues together or face the consequences of unsolved issues on migration dynamics.
I am an European freelancer in data protection, internationalization and social uses of process driven technologies. I write on subjects at the intersection of information systems and general interest.
