How to offer Multilingual customer support:
4 reasons why AI assisted live audio translation may be right for your business.

Before your business can start growing globally a significant barrier you need to consider is language.There are a variety of solutions available for those looking to offer multilingual customer service. Traditionally these fall into two categories. Whether you operate a contact center, hotel chain, an e-commerce platform or a multinational corporation, for the longest time you had to decide between outsource translation or building a team in-house. This is no longer the case.

When dealing with over-the-phone interpretation (OPI) advances in AI technology present a shift in the market. A 2023 survey shows that businesses reported 10% of their service operations involve the use of AI, this figure is only expected to have grown since. In fact respondents to the same survey reported expecting disruptive changes to their industries in the next three years. Projections show a CAGR of 19.1% for the use of AI in translation up to 2026.

In this article we discuss which interpretation services are right for your business. We will be weighing the pros and cons, while also exploring how AI based solutions could potentially change the market.

The basics of Over-the-Phone Interpretation (OPI)

Language pair limitations:

When considering any kind of translation, you need to understand language pairs as a limitation.

Choosing the right language pair and then finding resources accordingly dictates success in the target market. So how does one go about securing translation services for the correct language pair?

Well, for in-house solutions you will need to start looking for interpreters to hire. A factor to keep in mind is when demand for a certain language combination is low, businesses may have to pay a higher price. This also depends on whether interpreters who speak these languages are available in the first place. If the language combination is not available locally, businesses may also have to search for remote interpreters. Not to mention the cost of retaining them in the off-season.

With outsourced translation, this is a smaller problem, where large translation agencies are able to maintain a diverse catalog of interpreters. Then again while more popular languages are easy to translate between, less common combinations might still remain out of reach for that adventurous business looking to offer Hungarian ecommerce in Thailand.

Reducing Costs:

The greatest argument for outsourcing translation has been cost reduction. This doesn’t mean that outsourced translation can’t be expensive. Within outsourced translation there are a number of packages and prices available. Oftentimes the cost is directly tied to the quality of service being offered. But when compared to building a team in-house especially at a larger scale it remains the relatively cheaper option.

For in-house translation the cost depends on a number of factors. Most interpreters charge by the hour and this rate may depend on the language pair and locality of the interpreter. Another factor may be the expertise. Of course since a large proportion of interpreters work as freelancers, the expertise may be something your business will need to verify for itself. However there are websites like Proz that offer listings and reviews of available interpreters.

Even after acquiring talent your business will be faced with the task of coordinating with various full-time, part-time interpreters. Dealing with peak season traffic can be quite a managerial nightmare. All the while ensuring that your multilingual agents are trained with your business’s best practices in mind.

Customer Experience:

This is where businesses that choose to build a team in-house really take the upper hand. Being able to train your own multilingual customer support team creates a whole world of difference to customer experience. In-house agents are able to provide faster feedback. They also have far greater knowledge on the selection of products and services, and are by far the best suited to resolve customer complaints.

On the other hand, when you choose to outsource, the quality of customer service really falls into the hands of the translation agency. Since telephone interpreters often act as middle agents the drawbacks affect the customer directly.

Customers may face an increase in call handle time. This is because the message has to be relayed to the interpreter first and then re-relayed back to the agent. Not to mention the wait time between connecting to an outsourced translation agent during peak season like Christmas. and then translating to the call center agent.

Machine translation:

Machine translation has existed as a less expensive alternative within the outsource translation market for a number of years already. But due to concerns of accuracy, machine translation has not seen as much commercial application. There are also Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools that have become a staple of the translation industry, with up to 88% of freelance translators reporting use of at least one such tool.

So where does AI come in exactly you might ask. With current advances in AI call center technology accuracy has improved to a point where AI solutions that do not require a human interpreter have started to enter the market.

For live audio translation (aka real-time audio translation) the current technology does boast some impressive numbers. Capable of over 95% accuracy in more popular languages and over 85% accuracy in over 60 others. While more technical applications such as emergency hotlines may still benefit from having human interpreters on-board. For many other businesses that operate call centers using live audio translation offers a wide range of benefits.

What are the benefits of AI over traditional OPI services?

With how fast the world is moving to adopt artificial intelligence, it’s important to understand what this could mean for OPI services. When it comes to AI live audio translation businesses enjoy a lot more freedom in comparison to existing solutions for multilingual support.

1. Availability:

Real-time audio translation software offers a diverse catalog of languages and dialects that it can translate between, all available 24/7. This means that businesses don’t need to spend time searching for interpreters offering the correct language combinations. While the current AI solutions do not offer support for all languages, there are still over a hundred languages and dialects available. All of which can be interchangeably translated between.

2. Reduce Costs:

By not having to worry about acquiring multilingual agents your business can pay only for the time they actually use the service. Not having to bear the cost of retaining interpreters when business is slow or the overhead of managing an entire team.

In fact when compared to outsourced solutions, AI live audio translation still fares better in terms of cost-per-minute. As AI doesn’t need to rely on managing a diverse workforce of multilingual agents, the price of AI software is fairly low.

3. Improve customer experience:

When compared with both in-house and outsourced OPI, opting for an AI solution means that you can hire agents based on their skills rather than having to worry about their language capabilities. It also means that customers don’t have to wait on call while the interpreter understands and then relays their message.

4. Boost efficiency

AI live Audio translation has an upper hand in its scalability. For in-house solutions dealing with an influx of new calls means businesses may end up short of multilingual agents. However with AI, businesses no longer need to hire language specific talent since all agents can be trained to utilize the software.

The benefits of this over outsource translation come from how there are no third party agents relaying information. Which means that agents spend far less time dealing with customer calls. AI translation is able to reduce Average Handling Time by up to 50%.