24 Stats That Prove the Value of Conversational AI in Customer Service

Mollie Wiener September 21, 2022

By 2025, it’s estimated that 95% of interactions between brands and customers will be powered by artificial intelligence. Though the exact shape that AI interactions may take is subject to further technological advances and marketplace trends, this prediction indicates a staggering shift in the makeup of communications between organizations and consumers.

With conversational AI’s impact on customer service expected to increase significantly, brands must stay abreast of the trends and consumer preferences related to interacting with AI, particularly via chatbots. Here are 24 statistics we’ve curated that help illustrate how and why chatbots are so important for customer service.

Business Adoption of Conversational AI

Meeting evolving customer demands requires businesses to continually implement new ways to answer questions and resolve issues. To help improve the productivity of customer service teams, many brands are turning to chatbots.

Globally, the conversational AI market is expected to grow 22% between 2020 and 2025, with the market reaching nearly $14 billion by 2025 (Deloitte)
Chatbots presently are the number one most widespread use of AI in business, and the adoption rate of chatbots is expected to almost double over the next 2-5 years (Forbes)
Close to 80% of CEOs either have made changes or intend to adjust how they manage engagement with clients in response to emerging conversational AI technologies (Accenture)
A quarter of travel and hospitality companies use chatbots to enable customers to ask questions or complete bookings (Statista)
74% of brands that have introduced chatbots as part of their customer service strategy have been satisfied with the results (Tidio)

How Consumers Feels about Conversational AI

How do customers feel about the increasing prevalence of AI-based customer service channels, such as chatbots? These stats show that customers generally feel favorable toward chatbots, but still value human interaction for certain situations.

Nearly half (40%) of shoppers don’t have a preference for being helped by an AI-enabled tool or a human, as long as they are able to resolve their question or issue (HubSpot)
35% of customers would like to see more companies use chatbots (Opus Research)
The majority of consumers (80%) report having had positive experiences using chatbots to resolve issues (Uberall)
Chatbots aren’t always the answer, however: among those between the ages of 35-44, 60% of U.S. adults and 61% of U.K. adults feel that brands are pushing consumers toward chatbots too quickly (CGS)
- Only 32-33% of those between the ages of 18-24 feel this way, indicating greater adoption of chatbots and conversational AI amongst younger generations
More than 3 in 4 customers anticipate that chatbots will influence the expectations they have for companies over the next five years (Salesforce)
If the alternative option was to wait 15 minutes for a response, 62% of customers would rather interact with a chatbot than wait for a human agent (Tidio)

Consumer Expectations for Chatbots

Ensuring that a customer has a successful experience with a chatbot comes down to aligning the bot with certain preferences and expectations.

Speed is critical: when contacting a chatbot, 42% of consumers expect a response within 5 seconds. An additional 36% expect a response within 5 minutes (Salesforce)
68% of users who have chatted with a bot reported that a positive aspect of their experience was the speed of the bot’s response, while 42% liked that it was able to help them outside of normal business hours (Userlike)
Be transparent: over half of users want bots to make it clear that they are, in fact, a bot (Userlike)
Close to 80% of users want chatbots to provide the option to transfer to a human support representative (Userlike)
Just under a third (32%) of customers value chatbots with a sunny disposition, feeling that “friendliness and approachability” is one of the top benefits (Invesp)
The most prominent and preferred use for chatbot is to check on the status of an order, with 71% of customers indicating they prefer to use a chatbot for this as opposed to speaking with a CS representative (Tidio)
- Customers much prefer to speak with a human representative when they are making ac complaint about a product or service, with only 28% of customers preferring a chatbot in this scenario

Outcomes of Using Conversational AI for Customer Service

Conversational AI is exploding in popularity because of the tangible benefits of chatbots. Here are the results that companies have either seen or can expect to see in the future.

80% of executives have reported demonstrable improvements in customer satisfaction, delivery of service, and overall contact center performance as a result of implementing conversational AI (MIT Technology Review)
It’s estimated that chatbots will be responsible for saving consumers and businesses more than 2.5 billion hours of customer service time by 2023 (Juniper Research)
Over half (57%) of business leaders feel that conversational chatbots deliver a large ROI on minimal investment (Accenture)
Testing has found that chatbots reduce the average handle time of customer queries by 77% (Deloitte)
Conversational AI solutions stand to reduce the cost of providing customer service by 30% (VentureBeat)

Making Conversational AI Work For You

If these statistics are anything to go by, the future of conversational customer service is AI-based. With this being the case, brands must prepare for a world where bots can handle the lion’s share of customer inquiries.

For organizations with global, multilingual audiences, this opens up a new requirement: developing a chatbot that can handle inquiries in every language spoken by the brand’s customer base. Want to learn more about how to deploy a multilingual chatbot? Reach out to Language I/O to learn about our conversational translation technology.

Protecting Your Customer Service Team in an Economic Downturn

Mollie Wiener September 15, 2022

For the better part of 2022, many businesses and individuals have been bracing themselves for an impending recession. While economists have not come to a consensus on just how likely this is, the widespread anticipation of an economic downturn has already had a tangible impact on organizations across the U.S. Throughout the year, many major tech brands have been in the news for laying off anywhere between a handful and thousands of employees. In response, many organizations have announced hiring freezes.

Pausing hiring is a cost containment tactic that most workers would agree is far preferable to layoffs, but it still has a demonstrably negative impact on those employees who are already struggling to maintain their workload. For customer service teams in particular, this is a worrying trend: not only does leaving vacant positions unfilled risk overloading your current team members, but it also threatens the quality of the support each customer service representative is able to provide to customers.

With an uncertain economic future, losing existing customers because of poor-quality support is the last thing that brands can afford, especially when a slow down in new sales opportunities puts more pressure on those responsible for retaining customers. But if company-wide hiring freezes prevent staffing customer service teams adequately, how can organizations protect their current customer relationships?

Here are some tips.

Get your self-service support in good shape

Consumers are increasingly looking for ways to solve their own problems. This is great news for brands with comprehensive knowledge bases that they regularly update. For organizations with outdated or non-existent self-service materials, however, this is a sign to begin addressing those resources ASAP.

If you find that your customers are repeatedly coming to your agents with the same questions, such as how to reset their password or see billing information, this is an indicator of a great candidate for an FAQ article. Once you have a suite of articles ready for customer consumption, make sure that they are easily accessible and navigable—there’s no point to having a great knowledge base in place if no one knows how to find it.

Having a stellar self-service support presence is critical not only because customers expect it, but because it helps drive support requests away from your agents. If backfilling open positions on the customer support team is on an indefinite hiatus, your reps are likely handling an increased volume of incoming requests, but being able to point customers to an FAQ article helps close out tickets faster—or, ideally, helps steer those questions away from becoming tickets at all.

Have a 24/7 chatbot available

If cost containment measures extend to cutting support hours, such that you can’t have agents available around the clock, then setting up even a basic chatbot is better than radio silence. Chatbots improve the customer experience in a number of key ways; not only are they always online, but they also don’t require customers to wait in a queue for the next available agent.

Deploying a rules-based chatbot that directs users to your self-service articles or resolves issues without involving a live agent can reduce the volume of inquiries requiring a staff member, giving your team more bandwidth. This makes for better customer experiences, as your agents can focus their time and attention on more pressing inquiries while users with easily answered questions get the help they need right away.

Make your existing team multilingual

When we say “make your existing team multilingual,” we don’t mean buy everyone a subscription to Rosetta Stone or assign them to an hour of Duolingo exercises every day. Instead, if hiring freezes have prevented your team from bringing on multilingual talent to support customers who speak a foreign language, then it’s worth investing in real-time translation technology that enables your current team members to communicate with customers in any language.

While bringing on new technology can represent an additional expense, it is one that represents a massive opportunity for cost savings both in the present day and down the road. With 3 in 4 global consumers stating they are more likely to purchase from a brand again if post-purchase support is offered in their native language, providing multilingual customer support is a must-have for organizations seeking to retain global customers. The value of preserving those relationships far outweighs the cost of the technology.

If hiring freezes have prevented your customer service team from bringing on much-needed personnel to support global customers, then using technology to accomplish the same outcome is a far more budget-friendly solution.

Preparing for the Future

It’s impossible to say for sure what to expect in Q4 of this year, let alone what 2023 will bring. That being the case, it’s never a bad time to begin implementing these best practices. Self-service support, chatbots, and multilingual customer service aren’t only trends that speak to what consumers want from brands; they are methods to safeguard your bottom line by preserving customer relationships.

If your organization is looking for a way to protect your customer service team by giving agents the resources they need to provide multilingual support, reach out to Language I/O to learn more about our multilingual customer support solution.

5 Best Practices for Providing Excellent Ecommerce Customer Service

Mollie Wiener September 7, 2022

Successful online retailers waste no expense developing a compelling brand strategy to get new customers browsing their virtual storefront. But while clever messaging, appealing ad creative, and a good product/market fit can effectively bring in new sales, the customer care provided to each shopper cannot go overlooked. With 58% of shoppers stating that experiencing excellent customer service influences them to purchase from a brand again, ecommerce brands must have strategies in place to deliver top-tier customer support that keeps buyers coming back.

Here are five key tips for providing customer support to online shoppers.

#1: Offer Self-Service Support

When faced with an issue or question, customers don’t always feel the need to contact a customer support representative. Shoppers are increasingly developing a preference for finding the answers to their own questions, with 4 out of 5 customers opting to try and solve their own problems first before contacting a live agent.

Basic queries or frequently asked questions, such as those about shipping or payments, should be easily searchable in an online self-service portal such as a knowledge base. Additionally, customers should be able to access information about their specific transaction via self-service methods like a chatbot. Deploying a chatbot to help customers through returns and/or exchanges as well as other processes helps take some of the work off of your staff, while helping customers get the service they need faster and around the clock.

#2: Take an Omnichannel Approach

All shoppers have differing preferences—including how they want to contact a brand’s customer service department. Even when different customers have the same goal, such as to get in contact with a live agent, the way they choose to do so may vary depending on their preferred communication channel. This is why having an omnichannel approach in place is an important aspect of successful customer support.

While knowing your target market’s preferences can inform which communication channels to emphasize, such as having more agents dedicated to email and phone support for an older demographic, there will always be outliers, especially as technology advances. Because overall consumer preferences for real-time communication are fairly spread out across different channels—41% prefer live chat, 32% prefer over-the-phone communication, and 23% want to contact organizations via email—brands should invest in a dedicated presence across these various platforms.

#3: Personalization is Key

Once a customer self-identifies, the representative should be able to immediately call up their order history and other relevant information that fills in the gaps. Customers don’t want to spend extra time providing details they’ve already shared with your brand, regardless of how long ago it was or who on the team they might have shared it with.

Considering that 3 in 4 shoppers are more likely to buy from a retailer that recognizes their name and makes suggestions based on their purchase history, ecommerce brands must have the tools in place to easily store and access relevant information about customers. Using this data to foster meaningful communication sets the stage for a memorable customer experience that makes shoppers want to buy from you again.

#4: Give Reps the Tools They Need to Succeed

Even the most personable, empathetic, and effective agents will struggle if the processes to which they must adhere are inefficient or disjointed. When introducing new technology to make the customer experience better, don’t allow the agent experience to be sacrificed in the process.

Example: If you’re bringing on a tool to better personalize live chat support, that technology shouldn’t require agents to leave their existing CRM window or otherwise in order to take advantage of its insights or benefits, as this will likely lead to lower adoption of the technology and more frustration on behalf of your agents. Considering customer service representative turnover is already higher than in other industries, losing your best reps to technology that makes their jobs harder isn’t an option.

#5: Make All Support Channels Multilingual

One of the beautiful things about ecommerce is that it enables retailers to sell products to anyone, anywhere. Because of this, shoppers from all over the world are likely to visit your website and browse—but they are far less likely to like what they see if content isn’t provided in their native language.

The aptly named “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy” series from CSA Research reports that nearly two-thirds (65%) of global consumers prefer website content to be in their language, even if the language quality is poor. 76% of consumers, meanwhile, prefer products to have information available in their own language, and a stunning 40% of consumers will simply not purchase from a website that does not have content in their language.

For ecommerce brands, for whom their website is everything, these preferences must be addressed if the retailer seeks to go global or expand into any region where the language spoken is not the same as the one used by the brand. This preference for multilingual content also extends to customer support—the same study found that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand again if customer service is provided in their language. For any retailer, but especially those who rely on repeat purchases to achieve a profitable ROI, adhering to all of the previously mentioned best practices on a multilingual scale is a must.

That means providing self-service support, such as FAQ articles and chatbots, in the customers’ native language, as well as having a means of delivering multilingual support in real-time over chat, email, and other live communication channels.

Learn how Language I/O can help your existing support team provide cost-effective, scalable multilingual support. Reach out to us to learn more or get a personalized demo.

Improving Occupancy Rates at Your Multilingual Contact Center

Mollie Wiener August 31, 2022

Contact centers and customer support teams track a number of critical metrics to monitor performance and overall health of the business. While measuring customer satisfaction, typically via CSAT or NPS surveys, is almost always the most important data point for these teams to track, there are many additional metrics that can’t go overlooked.

One such metric is occupancy rate. Understanding the occupancy of each agent at a glance, as well as overall occupancy of the team as a whole, helps inform hiring decisions as well as uncover opportunities for improvements to process or performance.

Getting occupancy right is a challenge for many customer service departments, especially those at organizations tasked with providing multilingual customer support. If you’re looking to optimize occupancy rates for your CS team or contact center and experiencing the challenges of providing multilingual support, keep reading.

What Is Contact Center Occupancy?

Put simply, contact center occupancy measures how much of an agent’s available work time is spent helping customers. This includes the total time spent actively communicating with customers via phone, email, chat, etc., as well as the time spent on follow-up activities from those conversations with customers.

How is Contact Center Occupancy Measured?

The formula for calculating the occupancy of a contact center is straightforward. For a specific period of time, take the total time that your agents spent helping customers and divide it by their total available work time. Take that number and multiply it by 100 to get their occupancy rate percentage.

You can do this for your entire team of agents or for each individual agent. In fact, we recommend you do both.

Here’s an example: if an agent has 40 available work hours in a week and spends 35 of those hours actively helping customers or completing tasks associated with customer requests, the occupancy rate for that agent is 87.5%.

What is an Ideal Contact Center Occupancy Rate?

The optimal occupancy rate for a contact center ultimately depends on a number of factors that may vary widely depending on the industry, the team composition, and your company culture.

Industry leaders generally recommend aiming for an average occupancy rate of between 80-90%, though some emerging thought leaders are advocating for the expectations for occupancy rate to lower slightly in order to produce a better working environment for agents and avoid high turnover rates.

The occupancy rate that you strive for can change over time, but what is most important is seeing where your actual rates stack up against the goals you’ve set. If your occupancy rate goal is 80% and your agents regularly come in at 70% or below, that’s an indicator that agents’ time is not being allocated properly and idle time is too high. Meanwhile, an occupancy rate of 90% or above means that your agents are over-capacity, so it’s probably time to expand the team or find a strategy to reduce incoming support requests.

While we can’t issue a blanket statement telling you exactly what your occupancy rate goals should be, we have plenty of tips for how to achieve those goals, whatever they may be.

Achieving Occupancy Goals at your Multilingual Contact Center

Every customer-centric organization is bound to run into challenges related to occupancy, particularly when a multilingual customer base is involved.

Why is optimizing occupancy rate especially difficult for multilingual customer support teams? Here’s an example. A company with only English-speaking agents begins receiving support requests in Spanish and Chinese as well as English, so they decide to invest in hiring agents with fluency in both Spanish and/or Chinese. This solves the problem of being able to communicate with Spanish and Chinese-speaking customers—up until one day, when the organization receives a massive influx of Chinese support requests beyond what the Chinese-speaking agents can address. The Chinese-speaking agents on the team are now overwhelmed and unable to properly address all of the support tickets in the queue. Meanwhile, the Spanish-speaking agents are experiencing an unusual downturn in support requests. But even though they have all this extra time, they can’t jump in and help their Chinese-speaking counterparts due to language barriers.

This CS team now has one subset of agents that’s over-occupied, and another that’s under-occupied. While some spikes in support requests can be predicted and accounted for in the hiring or scheduling plan, there will likely be many occasions when such increases are seemingly random and impossible to plan for.

So, how can brands with a multilingual customer base properly address all customer queries while achieving ideal occupancy rates?

Expand article support to every language your customers speak

When customer support requests pop up in a variety of languages, many brands respond by hiring agents who can speak those languages. While this helps address conversational requests for in-language customer support, it often means that knowledge base and FAQ articles are overlooked. Considering that 4 out of 5 customers try to solve their own problems first before contacting a brand’s customer service team, you can’t exclude your non-English speaking customers from getting answers via self-service support resources.

If your self-service portal and/or knowledge base is English-only, it’s time to expand into all of the languages your customers speak. Providing FAQ articles and related content in your customers’ native languages will help reduce the need on their end to contact customer support, thereby reducing the volume of requests that your team has to address.

Stand up a multilingual chatbot

Your AI-based chatbot doesn’t need to take a language class or spend every day on Duolingo to become a polyglot. With the right technology in place, you can equip your 24/7 chatbot to respond to inquiries in virtually any language.

Similarly to support articles, having a multilingual chatbot in place empowers customers to answer their own questions, lessening the need for them to contact your support team. With over a third (37%) of consumers reporting that they use a customer service bot to quickly obtain answers in an emergency situation, brands should make sure their chatbots are developed to handle pressing questions in any language.

Translate chat and email messages in real time

Providing self-service support in your customers’ preferred languages helps to partially alleviate the workload your team manages, but for most organizations it’s unlikely to be the sole answer to solving problems related to occupancy. Customers largely still expect to be able to communicate directly with an agent via online methods such as live chat or email, which requires brands to continue to invest in multilingual agents… or does it?

With the right technology in place, organizations have the ability to use their existing team of agents to handle support requests in any language, regardless of fluency or language skills among that team. Real-time translation technology gives brands flexibility, as it lessens the need to rely on hiring new agents during global expansion efforts or when requests in a specific language increase significantly.

In the previously mentioned example, our Spanish-speaking agents couldn’t jump in to help their Chinese colleagues during periods where Chinese-language requests were spiking. By adding technology such as live chat translation software into the mix, however, Spanish customer service representatives can communicate with and support Chinese-speaking customers, helping to keep both the Spanish- and Chinese-speaking support agents at the right level of occupancy.

Occupancy is just one reason that brands may feel overwhelmed trying to get multilingual customer support right. To learn more about how to provide multilingual support in real time without having to hire fluent agents, read our guide on delivering live chat support to your global customer base.

25 Customer Service Stats That Every Travel Company Must Know

Mollie Wiener August 24, 2022

Regardless of brand or industry, being a successful organization requires a focus on customer service. When driving growth, acquiring customers is only half the battle—the other half is customer retention and, even more importantly, expansion. For the travel and hospitality industry, where the lifetime value of a customer can be high, it’s critical for brands in this space to deliver excellent customer experiences that keep high-value travelers loyal.

How brands go about delivering a great experience to travelers can be influenced by a number of things, but at the top of that list should be data. Because data shapes our understanding of customer preferences and expectations, it informs organizations of areas for improvement and adjustment so that they can provide a consistently phenomenal customer service. That’s why we pulled together the following 25 key stats about customer service in the travel industry.

Customer Service Trends

First, let’s look at general customer service and experience trends. While not necessarily focused on travel, these data points speak to customer support expectations for all industries, including tourism, travel, and hospitality.

81% of customers say a positive customer service experience increases the likelihood of making another purchase (Zendesk)
One out of every five customers feels that contact center wait times are too long (Freshworks)
74% of customers will forgive an organization’s mistake after they receiving excellent customer support (Zendesk)
Regarding self-service, 88% of customers expect brands to offer customer self-service online (Statista)
Omnichannel service is critical: 72% of consumers expect brands to know their purchase history regardless of the communication method they are currently using (CX Today)
76% of customers expect to talk to someone immediately upon contacting a company (Zendesk)
Data privacy cannot be overlooked—71% of web users have indicated they do not want brands to use AI to improve the customer service experience if it threatens infringing on their privacy
68% of consumers will spend more with a brand that they feel understands them and treats them like ‘an individual’ (Khoros)
74% of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand again if they receive support in their own language, while 40% will straight out not buy from a brand whose website does not have content in their own language (CSA Research)

Traveler Expectations for Customer Service

79% of consumers say that personalized service from a travel brand is more important to them than personalized marketing (Gladly)
60% of travelers state they will switch travel brands after experiencing just 1-2 poor customer service experiences (Travel Daily News)
Email remains the most popular communication channel among travelers, with 34% of consumers indicating a preference for it when communicating with travel brands (Loqate)
81% of travelers want greater digital customer service from hotel brands (Finances Online)
Just over half (55%) of travelers expect travel brands to have a record of their reservation history when contacting customer support (Gladly)
When choosing a brand to book travel with, customer support is the number one priority for 60% of travelers (Google)
A mobile presence should not be overlooked: 19% of travelers prefer to be contacted via in-app messaging, while 16% prefer communication directly via SMS (Loqate)
67% of customers feel that technology advancements will positively impact their relationships with travel & transportation companies (Salesforce)
83% of travelers who use self-service solutions such as FAQs or chatbots want to be able to seamlessly transition to a support agent if needed, without having to repeat themselves (Gladly)

How Travel Brands are Stacking Up

Just under half of consumers (46%) report their recent experience calling a travel/hospitality brand was “just OK,” while an additional 20% say it was “slow and frustrating.” That’s 66% of travelers feeling less than positive about their experiences with travel brands (Travel Daily News)
When interacting with travel brands, almost two-thirds of customers (64%) feel like they are just a ticket number to the customer service agent (Gladly)
About 60% of travel brands say they offer customer support via chat, while 28% are experimenting with or using artificial intelligence (PhocusWire)
When it comes to email responses, 32% of travel brands respond to emails within the first 60 minutes. 57% respond within the first 3 hours, and 85% respond within the first 24 hours (Netomi)
The average email response time in the travel industry varies depending on the type of company. Both hospitality companies (such as hotels & resorts) and travel agencies’ average email response time hovers around 12.5 hours, while airlines average 16.3 hours and cruises come in at just under 24 hours (Netomi)
Nearly 40% of travel companies don’t offer email support at all (Netomi)
Fewer than a third (30%) of cruise lines provide customer support on both email and social media channels (Travel Daily News)

Supporting Travelers with World-Class Customer Service

The world of customer support is ever-evolving, such that strategies to provide excellent experiences to travelers will never be a matter of “set it and forget it.” Understanding the latest trends in customer support, both in terms of consumer expectations and how other brands are measuring up to those demands, helps guide how CS teams can leave a lasting positive impression on travelers.

Looking to provide a better customer experience to your travelers, regardless of the language they speak? Learn more about Language I/O’s real-time translation technology.

Key Benefits of Real-Time Translation Software for the Travel Industry

Mollie Wiener August 17, 2022

As customer experience expectations evolve, the technology that organizations use to communicate with customers must as well. With 75% of customers stating they are more likely to work with a brand again if post-sale support is provided in their native language, the time for travel companies to meet this demand is now. While there are a number of ways to deliver in-language support for travelers, the most cost-effective and scalable way for brands to provide multilingual support is via real-time translation software.

Here are the main reasons travel companies should be using translation software to communicate with global customers.

Get travelers the answers they need faster

It’s never ideal when something goes wrong for a customer, no matter what type of business environment it’s in. In the travel industry, customer mishaps can be especially damaging for both the traveler and the brand providing services. Travelers pour thousands of dollars into vacations or business trips; to have that expense and anticipation spoiled by a flight cancellation or lost bag is a nightmare scenario—one that needs to be resolved by a customer support team immediately.

Most large travel companies have a team of fluent speakers that can handle support requests in the languages spoken by a brand’s customer base. But relying solely on your multilingual staff still doesn’t prevent disasters. Imagine a Japanese speaker travels to the United States for work, only for their flight back to Japan to be canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile, they have a critical meeting the next day and they absolutely have to be in attendance. This traveler isn’t going to be happy hearing that no Japanese-speaking agents are available because it’s the middle of the night in Japan.

Translation software helps avoid these issues by enabling monolingual (i.e., English-speaking only) support agents to communicate with customers in any language. With this software equipped, the aforementioned Japanese speaker can have their issue resolved by an English or Spanish-speaking support agent whose messages are instantly translated into Japanese.

Manage seasonal spikes with ease

It doesn’t matter what part of the travel process your business supports—booking aggregators, airlines, rental car companies, hotels, and tourism-based groups are all going to experience some degree of seasonality.

Understanding seasonality’s impact on business operations helps when it comes to planning finances and revenue goals, but it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to properly staff customer service teams. Depending on the region, busy travel seasons may vary significantly, leading to various periods of increased support requests throughout the year. The hiring problem presented to customer service teams is a double-edged sword: staffing enough full-time bi- or trilingual agents to manage requests during these spikes will likely result in those same agents largely sitting idle during slower months—while not hiring extra help during busy periods will overwork the team and lead to a reduction in the quality of service travelers receive. It’s a lose-lose outcome.

This is another area where translation software helps. Let’s use Europe’s busy vacation season as an example. Rather than hiring agents who can speak the various European languages, a brand’s existing customer support agents can use translation software to easily communicate with travelers from Sweden, France, Portugal, etc. This helps keep a consistent team throughout the year, making budgeting easier.

Keep customers coming back

When choosing a travel brand to book with, the majority of customers (60%) say that customer service is their top priority. And because high-value travelers average seven airline reservations and nine hotel bookings a year, it’s paramount for brands who want to earn repeat business to deliver world-class customer experiences.

Real-time translation software helps achieve a higher quality of customer support that keeps travelers booking with the same brand again and again. Imagine your top-performing agent—the one who consistently closes out tickets in a timely fashion, who handles difficult cases with ease, and whose friendly disposition gets them rave reviews in customer satisfaction surveys. Now imagine if that agent could support more than just your English-speaking travelers. No matter if a ticket pops up in French, Swedish, Portuguese, Chinese, etc., your all-star rep can jump in and resolve the issue without running into language barriers.

Using technology to turn your top performers into polyglots helps ensure that customers get the quality of support that they need. It also means that you don’t have to worry about your most qualified team members sitting idle while less experienced agents handle difficult requests simply because they speak the customer’s language.

Implementing Real-Time Translation Software at Your Travel Company

Adding translation technology to your customer support tool belt does not have to be a challenging undertaking. The right technology is one that seamlessly integrates into your existing customer support tools—such as your CRM—and is easy for agents to use without disrupting existing processes. It should also be customizable via mechanisms such as a glossary, which dictates how industry- or brand-specific jargon is or is not translated. This is important in the travel industry, as terms such as “checking in” mean something much different to a traveler than they do to a project manager at a tech company, for instance. Imposing a glossary ensures that such terminology will be handled properly in every conversation.

If you are looking for the best-in-class machine translation technology that integrates into your existing tools, delivers high-quality translations, and empowers your team to support customers in more than 150 languages, Language I/O is the solution. Learn more about our technology by reaching out to us or scheduling a personalized demo.