Thursday, May 14, 2026

How AboutYou scales buyer assist round huge retail spikes


At a look

  • Based: 2014, Hamburg, Germany
  • Serves over 12 million prospects  
  • Gives assist in 26 European markets and 25 languages

The problem

AboutYou, a number one digital vogue and life-style retailer, gives a variety of attire, equipment, and footwear to prospects throughout a number of markets. Famend for its revolutionary method to personalization, About You creates a extremely tailor-made buying expertise, setting a benchmark for e-commerce excellence. Nonetheless, providing personalised, on-time and on-brand assist throughout European markets, whereas delivering on progress targets, isn’t any small process.

Managing quantity spikes is a crucial problem for any retailer, and in addition a key alternative to develop income. Whether or not spikes come from advertising and marketing campaigns, provider challenges, or the behemoth of Black Friday, AboutYou wanted a option to scale customer support assets with out continuously hiring or incurring massive prices, whereas sustaining a constant, high quality assist expertise.

“We constantly confronted the pricey problem of ramping up and down short-term assets for our campaigns. That is the place Unbabel got here into play, serving to us to flexibly allocate our present assets throughout markets which can be the main focus of those campaigns. Unbabel supplied fast, simple processes from implementation to agent coaching and power utilization, making it an environment friendly answer for our wants.”

– René Fischer, Senior Buyer Service Controller & Product Admin

The answer

AboutYou chosen Unbabel’s AI-powered translation platform, combining machine and human translation to satisfy a wide range of high quality wants, to handle this customer support progress problem. Unbabel was chosen for its means to offer:

  • High quality: Unbabel’s high-quality translations ensures AboutYou maintains its dedication to offering glorious assist – even throughout peak durations. 
  • Simplicity: Unbabel’s onboarding course of and integration into present techniques like Zendesk are seamless, simplifying the implementation and agent coaching course of for AboutYou.
  • Accomplice Method: Unbabel’s mixture of devoted assist, deep linguistic experience and growing tailor-made options to satisfy AboutYou’s particular wants confirmed the extent of funding into the connection.

The outcomes

By integrating Unbabel into Zendesk and progressively rolling out the answer throughout languages, AboutYou achieved vital enhancements in its customer support operations:

  • Value Financial savings: Black Friday particularly is a problem in retail and ecommerce, and AboutYou was capable of accrue financial savings within the six-figure vary throughout Black Friday by avoiding the necessity to rent and practice extra customer support representatives.
  • Constant Efficiency: There was no unfavourable impression with Unbabel on KPIs like Service Degree Agreements (SLAs), Buyer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, dealing with occasions, or the general buyer expertise. 
  • Strengthened Accomplice Relations: AboutYou obtained constructive suggestions from its outsourcing companions. The brand new flexibility let these companions scale back frequent staffing changes, bettering stability and worker retention.

“Regardless of preliminary doubts, the device has confirmed to be extraordinarily user-friendly. The most important benefit is that ticket dealing with is hardly any totally different from the best way I’m used to dealing with tickets in my native language. The dealing with is intuitive and easy, in order that the workflow stays uninterrupted, and the device is fast and straightforward to make use of. Unbabel makes a big contribution to overcoming language obstacles with out complicating the work course of.”

– AboutYou Buyer Help Agent

Managing Spikes in Motion: Black Friday

Black Friday clearly demonstrates the flexibleness AboutYou enjoys with Unbabel. With large customer support spikes, AboutYou was capable of rather more easily handle the amount with out rising headcount. 

With Unbabel, AboutYou strategically deploys assets to handle the early peaks in Romania and Bulgaria, the place Black Friday begins earlier. By deploying Unbabel-supported brokers to those spikes, AboutYou didn’t should recruit and practice on brief discover. As quantity in Romania and Bulgaria subsided, however surged in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, AboutYou re-allocated these assets seamlessly, once more with out the churn of hiring and coaching. 

This flexibility permits AboutYou to efficiently handle the Black Friday surge with out having to rent extra workers. By shuffling the staff primarily based on capability, reasonably than language talent, they might keep away from a rise in FTEs within the mid double digits, and the related price of mid five-figures per FTE. This corresponding financial savings lets AboutYou invests the place it issues – within the buyer expertise.

Graph - Black Friday 2024, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Graph - Black Friday 2024, Romania and Bulgaria.Graph - Black Friday 2024, Romania and Bulgaria.

Unbabel’s AI-powered translation platform lets AboutYou effectively handle customer support operations, notably during times of excessive demand. By making their brokers multilingual, AboutYou can flexibly use assets to satisfy spikes wherever they’re, and assist the companies income and advertising and marketing objectives, regardless of the market, whereas nonetheless assembly the excessive requirements of assist and buyer expertise AboutYou has set. 

Trying to increase throughout markets or optimize your multilingual operations with on-brand high quality? Unbabel may also help.

Concerning the Creator

Profile Photo of Chloé Andrews

Chloé Andrews

Chloé is Unbabel’s Product & Buyer Advertising and marketing Supervisor. She focuses on enhancing buyer understanding of Unbabel’s merchandise and worth by way of focused messaging and strategic communication.

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