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.
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 automatically into the consumer’s language.
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.
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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
- Support for PII Masking isn’t yet available. As Copilot Translate progresses through Early Access, we look forward to introducing support.
- Only plain and rich (bold, italics) text is translated. Other types of content (structured content, secure forms, etc.) aren’t translated.
- Formatting and emojis aren’t preserved when messages are translated. Translated messages are plain text.
- Translation to the consumer’s language happens after the agent sends a reply, so editing the translated message isn’t possible.
- 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:
We encourage you to try additional consumer languages. 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
When an agent finds that the consumer is speaking a language they don't understand, they can turn on the translation feature. This can be done by clicking the action button at the top of the conversation, or by entering the keyboard shortcut: ALT + SHIFT + T (Think “T” for translate).
From that point on, translation is effortless and automatic:
- All messages from the consumer are translated automatically into the agent's preferred language.
- The agent types their reply in their native language as usual, and sends it.
- The system takes care of automatically translating the agent's reply into the consumer's language before delivery.
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:
Details about translation of agent messages
When the translation feature is turned on, outgoing replies from the agent are translated automatically based on the most recent consumer messages. This works as follows:
Scenario A: There are consumer messages that have been translated.
This is one of the most common cases: The agent gets a consumer message in another language, and the system translates the consumer’s message.
- Result: The agent’s reply is translated based on the language of the most recent consumer messages.
Scenario B: None of the consumer’s messages have been translated.
This too can be common: All of the consumer messages have been in the agent’s language.
- Result: The agent’s outgoing message isn’t translated because the consumer is communicating in the agent’s language.
Scenario C: There are no consumer messages yet.
This can happen when an agent reopens a conversation, and the consumer hasn’t sent a new message in the resumed conversation.
- Result: The agent’s first message isn’t translated before sending it. This is because the system needs to receive the consumer’s first message in the resumed conversation, so it can identify the language to use for translation.
Scenario D: There are consumer messages that weren’t translated due to an error.
This is a rare case: The agent gets a consumer message in another language, and the system attempts to translate it but fails to do so.
- Result: The agent’s reply is still translated automatically based on the language of the most recent consumer messages.
How translation errors are handled
If there’s an error during translation of the agent’s reply, the agent sees a warning message similar to the following at the top of the window:
Additionally, three more things happen:
- Beside the message in the conversation, an “x” is shown in place of the “message sent” double checkmarks.
- The same “x” is shown beside the message in the conversation list on the left, to alert the agent to the issue.
- The message text is restored to the input window, so the agent can take action by editing the message or trying to send it again.
➡️ If a translation issue persists, the agent should turn off translations for the conversation.
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.
An agent can turn on and off translation at will. And conversations can be transferred from one agent to another. Given this, overall what rules govern the agent’s experience?
LivePerson treats what the consumer sees as the definitive record of the conversation. This means:
- When translations are Off for a conversation, the agent sees all consumer and agent messages just as the consumer does.
- When translations are On for a conversation, the agent sees all consumer and agent messages in the current agent’s preferred language.
Tips
The agent can quickly turn on translations for a conversation using this keyboard shortcut: ALT + SHIFT + T
Get started
If you’d like Copilot Translate turned on for your account, submit your request via this form.
Then configure Copilot Translate.