Highlights
Wargaming, a leading game developer, and publisher, uses Unbabel to handle support tickets in several languages, allowing them to cost-effectively scale up multilingual service without hiring new agents based on language skills. This includes multiple Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. With Unbabel’s combination of machine translation and human editors, Wargaming’s agents can focus on delivering the best player support experience without being deterred by language gaps. The end result is a clear improvement in the experience of their gamers—faster response times, higher satisfaction ratings, and increased conversions to paid tiers.
About Wargaming
Wargaming creates top-quality gaming experiences for millions of players around the world. Specializing in massively multiplayer online (MMO), military strategy, and action games, its popular portfolio includes World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships Blitz.
The challenge
Wargaming is no stranger to meeting the demands of millions of players at once—after all, that’s pretty much the definition of massively multiplayer online games. Still, every year comes with new challenges. During 2020’s massive surge in digital gameplay, Wargaming knew they would have to meet increased customer service demands head-on with a comprehensive support solution at a reasonable cost.
Their goals in working with Unbabel included:
1. Keeping costs under control
It’s hard to anticipate support issues that will arise over time, whether after a planned game launch or an unplanned uptick in adoption, as we have seen during COVID-19. It’s even harder taking into account tickets from different languages. Even modest fluctuations in ticket volumes can create inefficiencies with a team of in-house agents. For Wargaming, the goal is to be economical and efficient without compromising on player experience.
2. Conquering new territories
Forget the cliché about gaming being a teenage boy thing. Gaming is a global phenomenon among kids and adults, males and females, and across the income spectrum—even more so during and after the pandemic. Finding pathways into new markets, countries, and demographics requires adapting many aspects of CX to local and cultural nuances. Keeping ticketing open 24/7, no matter the time zone, is also key. None of this is easy but the opportunity to reach more players is worth it to an ambitious company like Wargaming.
3. Gamer-first support
Gaming companies do more than just deliver fun, one-off games to players. The best companies aim to establish relationships with their players over years or even decades. Getting players to connect with the Wargaming brand requires attention to detail at every touchpoint, especially when a player has a question or concern. This means staffing a service team of actual gamers to truly connect with players. If teams are forced to choose agents based on language vs. skills and interests, it’s much harder to staff up a team of passionate gamers.
To meet these objectives, Wargaming needs cutting-edge technology to offer multilingual support and a personal touch for its gamers. Unbabel provided Wargaming with the AI-powered language operations (LangOps) solution they needed.
The solution
Unbabel’s translation services are next-level, as the platform leverages both AI and human intelligence. The results are not only fast and accurate, but they’re also personal and adaptable to niche industries and unique company needs. Unbabel’s platform also permits a leaner customer support team to resolve larger ticket numbers more efficiently.
Level one: Testing out the gear
Unbabel provides language support for common languages like Chinese and Spanish as well as less widely spoken languages. Wargaming recognizes that a player who speaks Portuguese or Korean is no less valuable and deserving of high-quality support than one who speaks English.
Wargaming invested in Unbabel because of its machine translation capabilities and community of human editors who help guarantee the quality of translation. Unbabel enables the Wargaming team to scale language support up and down as needed when launching a game or during unexpected surges or team member absences, all in a cost-effective way.
Level two: Putting the tech to work
Technology continually enables us to improve how we do business, and customer or player support should be no exception. Wargaming’s business model is highly anchored to technology and innovation, and they are committed to leveraging industry-leading tools.
Their stack of customer support technology includes skill-based routing across support channels, which enables tickets to be auto-directed to the most appropriate agent. This leads to faster resolutions, balanced team workflows, and improved efficiency. And with Unbabel, Wargaming’s skill-based routing gets an extra boost of efficiency, because language is no longer a barrier.
Incoming tickets are quickly machine-translated by Unbabel (passing through a human editor when needed to assure quality) and then handled by Wargaming’s support team. Then, agent responses pass through Unbabel’s AI-powered language operations solution.
This way, support agents can be hired based on their knowledge and passion for gaming, rather than linguistic fluency or versatility. Combined with skill-based routing, players with concerns are connected with the best-suited agent and get their issues resolved in record time. This leads to higher game player satisfaction and increased loyalty to the Wargaming brand.
Not only do Wargaming’s players receive fast responses in their native language, but they also get the benefit of personal and expert assistance, proving that a player-first approach prevents churn and increases loyalty.
Level three: Friction-free integration
Implementing a new system takes time and resources. The slower the process, the more expensive it will be. This is doubly true when it comes to integrating complex SaaS tools.
Unbabel integrates directly with Zendesk Support to streamline ticket creation, tracking, and resolution management.
“Launching Unbabel at Wargaming through Zendesk’s ticketing platform was a seamless experience. It allowed the company’s support agents to waste no time in offering top-tier assistance without regard for language barriers.”
Fabien Dupont, Player Relations Senior Global Project Manager, Wargaming
Let’s talk languages
Before the advantages of AI, and without a nimble BPO strategy, the most brands could hope for was an in-house support staff that spoke the world’s major languages, most obviously English.
Times have changed, and Wargaming aims to stay one step ahead of global competition. Of utmost importance is offering a worldwide user base high-quality assistance in their native languages.
Unbabel is now providing Wargaming with fast, accurate, and human translations in several languages, including Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese. They are also able to quickly spin up support for languages that only need short-term coverage.
Wargaming’s implementation of Unbabel has been a clear success:
Improved conversions
At first implementation, an A/B test was devised: A portion of Wargaming’s users received a reply from customer support in their native language; another portion got a non-native response.
The test was to measure the percentage of users who would make the transition from free to paid premium memberships after their support experiences.
They found that 26% of the free players who got a reply in their native language became paying players, while only 12% of the free players became paying ones when they got non-native replies. In other words, native support more than doubled their conversions from free to paid tiers.
Player satisfaction
Player satisfaction scores (PSAT), are also a solid way to measure how customers feel about your brand. Since rolling out Unbabel, Wargaming has seen PSAT scores increase, proving the value of the partnership.
Player feedback loops
A great gaming experience can turn happy players into voluntary brand ambassadors, singing your praises on public gaming forums and social media.
With Unbabel, Wargaming unlocked another invaluable channel to gauge player reactions and collect feedback. Now that players could express themselves freely in their native tongue, and using gamer idioms, Wargaming could increase its understanding of what players enjoyed about their games and how they could improve. More actionable player feedback has led to the company offering numerous popular in-game purchases and subscription upgrades. And that’s just immediate ROI; the long-game benefits of delighting a vocal user base are immeasurable.
The Unbabel effect
- Wargaming only has a small team of English and Russian support reps
- Unbabel offered 5CA its combined AI and human translation powers
- Unbabel and 5CA provided Wargaming native quality translation in 10 languages
- 26% of free players became paying players after getting a native-language reply
- CSAT scores jumped to 82% and have remained there ever since
- Response time in all 10 languages is 95% in the first 24 hours
