The problem
English CSAT sat around 88% while Spanish CSAT sat at 71%, a gap explained by service, not product: Spanish-speaking customers (about 19% of transacting customers) were served by a thin bilingual layer inside an English operation. The gap was destroying value, with Spanish-speaking support contacts showing a 30-day repeat-purchase rate 14 points below the English equivalent. Two prior fixes had failed, and a Spanish checkout launch loomed.
What we did
- Built a Spanish-primary operation with English overflow, hiring for Spanish quality first
- Authored a written Latin American Spanish style guide, proscribing terms that had drawn complaints
- Rebuilt the knowledge base in Spanish (340 articles) rather than machine-translating it
- Ran fortnightly joint calibration against the client's US English quality rubric
Results
Spanish CSAT rose from 71% to 91% by month 12, closing and slightly exceeding the English benchmark, while first contact resolution on Spanish rose from 54% to 84%. The repeat-purchase gap closed to within three points, the Spanish checkout launched on schedule at parity, and cost per contact fell 58% against the client's blended US bilingual cost.
Metrics
Before and after
- Spanish-language CSAT+20 pts
- Before71%After91%
- First contact resolution, Spanish+30 pts
- Before54%After84%
- Average handle time-35%
- Before9.4 minAfter6.1 min
- Cost per contact-58%
- BeforeUSD 7.40AfterUSD 3.11
- Annualised attrition
- 61% (US bilingual) → 19% (-69%)
These metrics are shown as text only, because the client did not provide a comparable starting figure.
Bars compare the starting position with the measured result. Each row is scaled separately because the units are not the same.
Figures relate to the period stated and were provided by the client. They depend on that client's starting point, so they are not a forecast for another operation.
We had a seventeen-point satisfaction gap between our English and Spanish customers and we had stopped believing it could be closed. It closed in a year. The thing that made the difference was building a Spanish operation rather than adding Spanish to an English one.
What stayed in place
The Spanish style guide and 340-article knowledge base are client-owned assets now supporting the localised checkout, app and email marketing, and the joint calibration cadence has become the client's model for its other outsourced functions.