A customer in another country asks about returning something. She gets an accurate translation of the domestic returns policy.
Her statutory rights in that country are different, the return address is different, who pays the postage is different, and the period is different. Every word of the answer was correctly translated and the answer was wrong.
She acts on it, the return is refused, and a complaint follows that the business cannot really defend, because it told her something untrue in her own language.
1. List the facts that actually differ
Payment, delivery, returns, warranty, tax, pricing display and anything legally required. The list is finite and most businesses have never written it down.
2. Record the payment methods per market
What is accepted, what is expected locally and what will simply fail, since a missing local method is one of the largest causes of abandoned international purchases.
3. Record the delivery expectations per market
Times, carriers and what is normal there, since an acceptable delivery time in one country is unacceptable in another.
4. Record the returns position per market
Statutory rights, periods, who pays and where things go. This is where a mistranslated answer does the most damage.
5. Record the tax and price display rules
Whether prices must include tax, what must be shown and where, which differs and is frequently a legal requirement rather than a preference.
6. Record the duty and import position
Who pays, roughly how much and what happens at the border, which is the largest deterrent for international buyers.
7. Record the warranty and guarantee differences
Statutory minimums vary, and stating the domestic position everywhere is both wrong and a compliance problem.
8. Record the regulatory statements required
Which is the ground in legal and compliance questions in other markets.
9. Record the public holidays
Because delivery estimates, support availability and response times all depend on a calendar that is not the domestic one.
10. Record the business hours and time zones
So a stated response time means the same thing to a customer eight hours away, which is the ground in time zone questions from international customers.
11. Record the address and telephone formats
Which break checkout forms built for one country and are a silent cause of abandonment that nobody ever reports.
12. Record the units and conventions
Sizes, measurements, dates and currency, each of which causes a misunderstanding that looks trivial and produces a return.
13. Keep it all in one place
Attached to the answers rather than in a separate document, so the correct local fact is used rather than the domestic one translated.
14. Review it when anything changes in one market
A rule change in one country affects one entry rather than the whole document. Recording each fact per market is what makes those updates small, and treating localisation as a single block is what makes them feel impossible.
15. Answer with the local facts, not the translated ones
An assistant that holds the market specific facts alongside the language, and gives a customer in each country the answer that is actually true there, prevents a correctly translated and entirely wrong reply. Capturing what each market needs is covered in the best chatbot questions for capturing high quality leads, and the location specific version in breakdown location questions that slow a response. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under small business.