12 February 2025
Refining global user experiences
Operating in over 200 markets worldwide, the client is an established financial technology company specializing in online payments. With a focus on innovation, security and accessibility, the client consistently looks for ways to improve the user experience and earn customer trust.
Trust is always a major factor in business-customer relations. It is even more critical for businesses working in the financial sector, whether in banking or payments. Building that trust can be difficult, especially when businesses aim to expand internationally.
As the global leader in online payment systems, our client had cultivated a vast and diverse user base. However, rapid growth and increasing localization demands began to strain its existing processes, leading to challenges in quality, efficiency and user satisfaction.
Recognizing the need for a more robust and customer-focused localization model, the business partnered with Alpha CRC. Over a two-year collaboration, Alpha CRC worked closely with the client to redefine its localization strategy, with a particular focus on improving user experience (UX) across global markets.
The client’s existing approach to localization overemphasized reducing cost-per-word fees, which led to inconsistent translations and poor user experiences.
Sociocultural barriers also emerged as a significant issue. Gender-sensitive languages like French and Arabic lacked clear guidance. Content was also overly USA-centered, using imagery that was not representative of local markets, or omitted culturally significant elements.
Technical limitations compounded these challenges, with mobile texts lacking support for special characters due to the use of outdated encoding systems. Workflow inefficiencies such as reliance on an adaptation-rule system and a lengthy approval process also slowed localization efforts and limited scalability.
Alpha CRC introduced a transformative approach to the client’s localization strategy. A dedicated team of language experts took full ownership of their respective locales, handling translation, transcreation, review and quality assurance.
These experts analyzed the client’s existing content and created clear guidelines for gender-sensitive languages, ensuring sentences were grammatically correct and culturally appropriate. The team also recommended a switch from ASCII to UTF-8 encoding, which would allow special characters to be incorporated into mobile texts, improving readability and vastly enhancing the user experience for global consumers.
A direct link was established between language experts and the client’s internal customer service team, with service agents passing complaints directly to the Alpha CRC team, which provided recommended UX solutions.
Consistency was another key focus. Our teams created comprehensive glossaries and style guides to standardize terminology and tone across content types. A new cloud-based localization platform also allowed language experts to view content in its intended context, enabling them to make informed decisions and deliver a more streamlined and cohesive user experience.
The collaboration delivered impressive results, transforming the company’s localization model and significantly enhancing user experience across global markets. By prioritizing quality and cultural adaptation, the company was able to reduce inconsistencies and deliver a more inclusive and user-friendly platform. Sociocultural adaptations, such as addressing gender sensitivity and incorporating special characters, made the platform more accessible and appealing to diverse audiences.
Consistency in terminology and tone elevated the professionalism of the client’s content, improving consumer trust and the company’s presence in international markets. Collaboration with customer support teams also created a feedback loop which ensured user concerns could be addressed promptly, further enhancing the overall user experience.
Alpha CRC’s innovative approach to UX localization not only resolved the client’s immediate challenges, but also laid the foundation for a more scalable and customer-centric localization model. The partnership is a showcase of the transformative power of strategic localization in enhancing user experience and driving global success.
