Overview

Amazon requires sellers who list products on international marketplaces to provide customer support in the local language of each marketplace where they operate. This requirement applies whether you fulfill orders yourself or use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), though the two paths differ significantly in terms of effort and complexity. Understanding your obligations and options is essential for maintaining strong seller performance when expanding globally.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Local language support is mandatory — If you sell on Amazon.co.jp, you must offer customer service in Japanese. If you sell on Amazon.es, support must be available in Spanish. This applies to every international marketplace.
• FBA handles it for you — When you enroll in FBA, Amazon provides 24-hour customer support in the local language on your behalf, removing one of the biggest barriers to international selling.
• Machine translation is risky — While automated translation tools may seem like a quick fix for responding to customer inquiries, poor translations can damage the customer experience and hurt your seller performance metrics.
• 24-hour response time applies globally — Amazon expects sellers to respond to customer contacts within 24 hours, which becomes more challenging when operating across multiple time zones.
• Third-party providers are a viable alternative — Sellers who fulfill orders themselves but lack in-house multilingual staff can outsource customer support to specialized third-party service providers.

Fulfilling Orders Yourself: The Customer Support Challenge

When you choose to handle order fulfillment on your own through Merchant Fulfilled or Seller Fulfilled methods, the responsibility for customer service falls entirely on you. This means fielding inquiries, resolving complaints, tracking shipments, and handling returns — all in the local language of whichever marketplace you are selling in. For sellers based in English-speaking countries who expand into marketplaces like Amazon.de, Amazon.co.jp, or Amazon.com.br, the language barrier presents a real operational hurdle. You need customer service representatives who understand your product catalog, can track order status and delivery timelines, and are able to communicate clearly and professionally in the required language.