EA release
Copilot Translate is currently in Early Access (EA) release. To have the feature turned on for your account, submit your request via this form.
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Introduction
In today's interconnected world, global brands serve customers speaking a multitude of languages. While the demand for multilingual support is clear, language barriers continue to be a significant hurdle for delivering seamless global customer service.
LivePerson’s LLM-powered Copilot Translate is a translation feature that translates inbound and outbound messages in real time:
- Consumer messages are translated automatically into the agent’s language.
- Agent messages are translated into the consumer’s language upon request by the agent.
Copilot Translate is designed to bridge the language gap, allowing agents and consumers to communicate effortlessly, each in their preferred language. This means that language is no longer an obstacle to clear, efficient, and empathetic interactions in messaging conversations.
Key benefits
Copilot Translate offers a comprehensive solution that delivers significant advantages across your entire operation, benefiting your consumers, brand, and agents.
Consumer benefits
- Instant understanding: Consumers can express themselves fully and be understood, leading to more natural and effective interactions.
- Faster issue resolution: Clear communication in their preferred language accelerates the resolution of their inquiries.
- Reduced communication friction: Say goodbye to frustration and misunderstandings caused by language barriers.
- Enhanced satisfaction: Personalized service in their native language leads to a significantly more positive and satisfying experience.
Brand benefits
- Accelerated market expansion: Quickly scale your support to new international markets without the time and expense of building out dedicated multilingual teams.
- Reduced operational costs: Significantly lower expenses associated with hiring and training a vast multilingual workforce.
- Enhanced global reputation: Provide seamless, localized support that builds trust and strengthens your brand's image worldwide.
- Improved customer retention: Satisfied consumers who feel understood are more likely to remain loyal.
- Competitive advantage: Stand out in the global marketplace by offering superior, instant language support that competitors can't match.
Agent benefits
- Optimized agent utilization: Any agent can assist any customer, regardless of language, ensuring more even call distribution and eliminating underutilization of specialized language agents.
- Boosted productivity: Agents can resolve issues faster and handle a higher volume of interactions by eliminating communication slowdowns caused by language barriers.
- Reduced stress: Agents no longer have to struggle with difficult conversations due to language differences, leading to a calmer work environment.
- Higher job satisfaction: Empowered to help more customers effectively, agents experience greater fulfillment in their roles.
- Streamlined training: Reduce the need for extensive language-specific training, allowing agents to focus on core customer service skills.
Limitations
- Only plain and rich (bold, italics) text is translated. Other types of content (structured content, secure forms, etc.) aren’t translated.
- If a conversation with a bot is transferred to a human agent, the messages in the automated conversation are not translated for the agent.
Language support
The only supported agent language is:
While LLMs are multi-lingual and can understand many languages, the consumer languages that LivePerson has fully tested and validated include:
- English
- French
- German
- Spanish
All other consumer languages are considered unsupported by the system: Translation still works, but the agent is notified that the language isn’t supported:
We encourage you to try consumer languages other than English. However, rigorous testing of your specific use case is required to ensure quality.
Agent experience
How preferred languages are determined
To ensure accurate and effective communication, Copilot Translate determines the preferred languages of both the agent and the consumer using the methods outlined below.
In our EA release, the system assumes that the agent’s preferred language is English (see Language Support).
To determine the consumer's preferred language, the system uses an LLM to analyze the most recent consumer turns in the conversation.
How translation works
Incoming messages to the agent are translated automatically into the agent's preferred language. (This takes just a few seconds.) In turn, the agent composes their response, and they request that the system translate it into the consumer's preferred language.
As an example, below is a conversation between a Spanish-speaking consumer and an English-speaking agent. Note how the agent’s default view of the conversation is entirely in English, which aids their comprehension and makes response times faster.
If desired, the agent can click the available links to view the actual messages received from and sent to the Spanish-speaking consumer:
To translate the message in the message composition window into the consumer’s preferred language, the agent clicks the translate button (1). To undo the translation and restore the original message being drafted, they can click the undo button (2).
Editing translated messages
If the agent has the appropriate permissions, they can alter translated messages, for example, by editing the text, adding an emoji, using Copilot Rewrite to rephrase the message (for improved clarity and professionalism), and so on.
Formatting translated messages
Formatting isn’t preserved during translation. If the agent composes a message that includes formatting, and then they request that the message be translated, there is no formatting in the translated message.
How translation errors are handled
If there’s an error during translation of the message, the agent sees the following message:
Conversation transcripts
- In an open conversation, the agent can view not only the actual messages that were sent, but also their translated versions. See our example earlier in this article.
- In a closed conversation, the agent can view only the actual messages that were sent. (Stay tuned for changes in this area.)
Reporting
No reporting capabilities are included in the EA release, but stay tuned for changes in this area.
FAQs
If the consumer switches to a different language that still doesn’t match the agent’s, does translation automatically switch to use the new language?
Yes, this happens automatically.
What happens if a customer sends a message with a mix of languages?
If a message contains more than one language, the LLM will respond in the language it identifies as dominant.
When a conversation is transferred from one human agent to another, but the languages of the two agents differ, is the conversation history translated from the first agent’s language to the second’s?
Yes, this happens automatically.
Get started
To have Copilot Translate turned on for your account, submit your request via this form.
Then configure Copilot Translate.