Chatbots aren’t new technology. They’ve been around for many years, since before the internet became mainstream. However, they’ve only become popular in the last decade or so. When chat boxes first appeared on websites several years ago as a way to talk with a customer service representative, many customers still preferred to talk to a person. They would rather get on the phone with a live customer service representative or send an email and wait for a reply, in spite of the time each of these options took.

That attitude is changing today, however. Chatbots are everywhere, and have become a major part of how we do business online. And customers are embracing them. Instead of viewing chatbots suspiciously or insisting on talking to a “real person,” many customers today prefer to use the chat function when they need support. Why? The answer is simple: chatbots can provide support quickly. Why wait for an agent when you can get immediate assistance.

If Customers Prefer Chat Support, Why Don’t All Companies Offer It?

Not only do customers like chat, but companies can also benefit from deploying chatbots for online support. The technology has evolved and is much more sophisticated now, making them a viable option for many organizations. Yet many companies that could be using chatbots haven’t deployed them in their customer service operations.

When surveyed, companies report that there are two main reasons why they don’t use chatbots in situations where they would benefit the organization. 

1. It takes more effort – or is more difficult – to deploy chat than the company expected.

In a recent Gartner report, 81% of respondents said that training AI with data is more difficult or takes more effort than they thought it would be. Most chat technologies take significant time, energy, resources, and training to install and tune a chatbot in one language. Companies hesitate to invest the resources to add chat when they already offer phone or email support.  

2. Providing chatbot support in additional languages usually requires rebuilding the bot from the ground up.

Once you spend the time and effort to deploy your English chatbot, most technologies require that you repeat the process for each additional language you provide. Then, when you have multiple chatbots operating, you must maintain them. The more languages and bots you have, the more maintenance you’ll need. Many companies find that their foreign language bots aren’t as well-maintained as their source language bot, creating a big disparity between your English support and your support for other languages. If your company doesn’t have the time, staff, or money to maintain multilingual chat, it affects the customer experience.

How to Efficiently Provide Multilingual Bot Support

Today, 74% of customers say they are more likely to buy your product if support is provided in their native language. It’s no longer a matter of if, but when will you deploy customer support chatbots in multiple languages. However, if you’re hesitating because of the time and effort it takes to deploy and maintain multiple language chatbots, there’s a solution to consider.

The way to get chatbots in all the languages you need for customer support, without investing extra time and resources, is to deploy a solution that easily enables multilingual chatbots. Language I/O is a technology that enriches customer service and marketing experiences at your company. With Language I/O plugged into your monolingual AI-based chatbot, you can provide multilingual customer support solutions with minimal deployment time. Language I/O uses accurate machine translation and can detect multiple languages for your chatbots. You can have different languages available for the customer, without having to build them from the ground up. 

The Language I/O technology uses a machine translator aggregation layer to intelligently select the best machine translation engine for the language pair in real time. You can load your own glossary of terms and preferred translations so you can have the best possible translations for your company. Language I/O also has glossary generation tools that can scan your public content for words and translations unique to your company. In addition, we have a self-improving glossary that scans chats for anomalous content. Over time this feature will detect new terms and keep your glossary up to date.

Our technology is up and running in days, not weeks or months, so you can start providing faster multilingual support almost immediately. Chat support can be available when agents aren’t, such as during bad weather or COVID lockdowns.

Don’t put off deploying multilingual chat another day. Contact us to see how Language I/O can help you provide fast, accurate customer service to all of your customers.