BlaBlaCar Drives Localization Efficiency and Time Savings with Phrase
BlaBlaCar is the world’s leading community-based travel app enabling 26 million active members a year to share a ride in 21 countries. Its technology matches drivers with empty seats with passengers heading the same way, so they can share the cost of the trip. With the mission to be the go-to marketplace for shared travel, BlaBlaCar combines carpooling with bus journeys from over 4000 operators to offer a wide choice of affordable and sustainable travel solutions, all in one app. In 2022, BlaBlaCar’s trusted community connected 2 million meeting points worldwide and enabled 90 million human encounters. Carpool drivers saved 450 million euros, and all BlaBlaCar’s mobility services contributed to avoiding 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Challenge
Scaling localization operations for growth
BlaBlaCar’s app is currently available in 18 languages in 21 countries, including most of Europe, as well as Mexico, Brazil, and India.
The company translates app content for its global customer base, including the app UI (user interface) in the form of content strings, push notifications, SMS, and emails. Beyond the app, BlaBlaCar also localizes marketing materials, such as customer campaigns, targeted customer content, as well as documents for its UX researchers, corporate communications team and bus operations.
BlaBlaCar needed a translation management solution that can easily accommodate all of its existing localization projects and also scale to meet future demands.
Solution
BlaBlaCar selects Phrase for translation workflow optimization
BlaBlaCar chose Phrase Strings as its translation and localization solution platform.
BlaBlaCar’s localization team manages the company’s content translation within Phrase Strings; developers and project managers in other business units also work in the platform.
Senior Localization Project Manager Simon Rimbert and his team leverage a range of Phrase String’s platform features including its repository, glossary, translation memories, comment capabilities, search function, and its main editing tool.
Phrase Strings is well-integrated into BlaBlaCar’s larger technology stack. Once a job is transferred to the LSP’s platform, it becomes readily accessible to a pool of linguists who can swiftly engage with the task using their own accounts, initiating the translation process instantly. In contrast, the previous workflow involved creating jobs, emailing the LSP with job details, a brief, and word count. This necessitated manual job setup by the LSP.
Our content in the Phrase platform seamlessly reaches our users, exemplifying efficiency in our operations. Through integrations with our language service provider (LSP), we can create and process jobs in under 30 minutes, eliminating the need for manual work.
Simon Rimbert
Senior Localization Project Manager
BlaBlaCar
The introduction of this integration has brought about automation, resulting in substantial time savings amounting to several hours per month. Additionally, it has significantly reduced the margin of error by eliminating the need for manual information transfer and reducing the dependency on manual communications between platforms.
The measurable impact of Phrase on BlaBlaCar’s business
Why Phrase?
Simon highlighted “Phrase Strings is a feature-rich and effective platform”. Phrase’s seamless integration into BlaBlaCar’s technology ecosystem ensures effortless and fast content dissemination to its customers.
This integration has automated job transfers, improved access for translators, reduced manual tasks, and enhanced overall efficiency, collectively saving valuable hours each month and minimizing error margins. As a result, BlaBlaCar can now focus on optimizing its content management within Phrase without the need for extensive LSP interaction, driving further efficiency and productivity gains.
Phrase Strings allows our project managers to focus their efforts on core tasks, ensuring optimal productivity and resource allocation.
Simon Rimbert
Senior Localization Project Manager
BlaBlaCar
Results & benefits
Boosting customer satisfaction through superior content quality and efficiency with Phrase
- Time savings: BlaBlaCar’s partnership with Phrase has yielded impressive time savings for the enterprise. Through the power of automation and seamless integration, BlaBlaCar saves valuable hours of work every month.
- Content control: BlaBlaCar’s adoption of Phrase has enhanced multilingual content management within the organization. Unlike conventional Translation Management Systems, Phrase provides a centralized repository that allows the teams to have complete and easy control over their content. This new found capability simplifies content access, editing, and management, making it a valuable asset for driving critical business decisions and content reuse.
- Customer success: Phrase’s responsive support team, readily address inquiries, and actively shape the platform’s evolution through BlaBlaCar’s valuable feedback. This interaction fosters a collaborative partnership: “Working with Phrase is more of a partnership than a vendor and customer relationship,” said Simon.
- Superior content quality: The platform’s advanced features foster seamless communication between BlaBlaCar and translators, ensuring highly effective collaboration. By providing translators with vital context through comments and attachments, BlaBlaCar significantly improves the accuracy of translations. This enhances quality, leading to increased customer satisfaction and trust. This quality-driven approach not only optimizes localization but also streamlines cross-functional teamwork within BlaBlaCar, ultimately contributing to the delivery of top-notch services in the competitive transportation industry and bolstering the company’s bottom line.
Conclusion
Phrase drives BlaBlaCar’s evolving growth strategy
Simon calls Phrase a critical component of BlaBlaCar’s business strategy. BlaBlaCar is leveraging Phrase for content localization, focusing on expanding its use to enhance help center and customer relationship content. This approach aims to improve business performance and customer loyalty, reflecting the efficiency gains from using Phrase in global service delivery.
Phrase has become an indispensable part of our localization strategy at BlaBlaCar. Our plans include scaling the range of materials localized within the Phrase platform, particularly our help center and customer relationship content. This in turn will bolster business, improve customer satisfaction, and drive loyalty. This strategic shift reflects the efficiency gains we’ve achieved through Phrase and our commitment to delivering top-quality services to our customers globally through streamlined translation and localization processes.
