Language AI allows consumers to engage in their native tongue, even if agents don’t speak the language. Monolingual agents can now provide multilingual support with machine translation built right into the Helpshift platform. With Language AI: Translation of Agent-User Conversations, agents can focus on what they do best—making consumers happy.
Language AI automatically detects the issue language for translations. If needed, the agent can manually change the issue language to any of the supported languages.
If the agent’s default language is English and the consumer submits a query in another language, a Translate button appears next to the end user's message.
Clicking it instantly translates the message into the agent's language (English). Both the original and translated messages are shown in the conversation, making communication smooth and effective.
Language AI works with two types of translation engines:
Generic Engines
Custom-Trained Engines
By default, Language AI uses pre-trained generic engines for translations. However, Language AI is flexible and can be configured to work with custom-trained engines based on branding requirements.
Generic Engines
Generic engines are pre-trained AI models designed to translate text from one language to another. They're created by training on a diverse set of data sources to ensure broad coverage of languages and content. List of supported languages for generic engines
Custom-trained Engines
Custom-trained engines provide AI models fine-tuned with your specific data. This delivers key advantages over default generic engines:
- Precise, contextual translations that accurately reflect industry and brand terminology
- Consistent brand voice and style across languages
- Ideal for translating industry-specific content containing unique jargon
By training models with your own data, these tailored engines ensure maximum relevance and accuracy for your content, maintaining your brand identity globally. List of supported languages for custom-trained engines
Enabling the Language AI feature
To begin harnessing the power of Language AI, you need to request the feature from the dashboard.
Request the feature from the dashboard
Follow the step-by-step to request the feature.
Log in to your Helpshift domain as an administrator.
On the Helpshift toolbar, click Sense AI.
- Click REQUEST FEATURE under the Language AI option.
You will see the confirmation dialog box on the screen.
Upon enabling this feature for your domain, you will see the button change to FEATURE ENABLED.
Using Language AI feature
This section helps agents navigate the different functionalities of the Language AI feature.
Read end user’s message in the Agent’s language (English)
Agent can translate end user’s messages in any of the supported languages into English by clicking the Translate button next to the message.
After clicking on the Translate button, you can see the end user’s original message (in the original language) as well as the translated message in agent’s language (English).
For example, you can see the original end user’s message language is 'French', and agent used the Translate button to translate into agent’s language (English).
Write in English and translate to end user's language
Agents can also write a message in English and then translate the same message to end user’s language by clicking the Translate button next to the message.
After clicking on the Translate button, you can see the message translated into end user’s language in the chat area.
After translating the message, agent can click on the REPLY button to send it to the end-user.
Now, agent can see both the messages in the chat. However, end user can only see messages in their language.
Note: Make sure that you click on the Translate button before sending every message to avoid sending the original message without translation.
Change the conversation language
This functionality is used when the end user is using a different language other than the language detected on their device. Now the agent has the option to change the language to translate to in order to match the language of the user.
To change the conversation language, follow the steps below:
- Select the issue where you want to change the language from what was detected.
In the example below, issue language detected is ‘English’ and the user's message language is in ‘Spanish’.
In the agent’s console, click on the Arrow(^) next to Translate button.
You can see the end-user language selection screen where ‘Default’ is set to the issue language, which is English.
Click on the drop-down option and select the end-user’s message language from the list (Spanish).
Now your selected language will be used for translations.
After changing the language, agent’s read and write message flow will be the same as mentioned above. You can refer the section links as below:
- Read end-user’s message in the Agent’s language (English)
- Write in English and translate to end-user's language
Translated message can be same as original message if agent selects incorrect language from the dropdown.
End user experience
End-users will have seamless experience as if they are interacting with an agent in their native language (For example, Spanish in the below image).
Important to know
Agent Language Support: Supported Agent language is English.
Availability of Translation Feature: This feature is available for ongoing or open issues only. It is not available for already resolved or rejected issues. However, if translations were performed while the issue was open, you can still view both the original and translated messages for resolved or rejected issues also.
Language AI uses metadata language as end-user’s language by default. Please make sure you enable language detection flag all the times in your issue language settings page to ensure metadata language is correct.