Increasingly, consumers are looking for a partner that can meet their high standards for a positive experience. For Lionbridge that means fast, quality service, in their preferred language. Enter Smart MT—our patented machine translation (MT) tool. Smart MT allows businesses to improve customer experience by adding real-time, customized language support to any communications channel, securely and cost-effectively. Read on to discover the top four reasons why brands should provide multilingual customer support and how Lionbridge can integrate it into existing customer experiences.

#1 Customer Support = Customer Experience = Brand

Language is an integral part of the global digital experience. To succeed, brands must deliver a consistent experience across channels and languages at scale. That includes customer service, which directly enhances the customer experience.

Smart MT allows you to provide customer support when no native language representatives are available, ensuring every customer enjoys a consistent experience—regardless of language. It’s also a cost-effective way to improve customer experience in local languages and increase support in regions that are experiencing a higher demand.

As you evaluate your language needs, you may also benefit from using our global digital experience assessments. This full suite of services provides actionable insights into where you can improve the customer journey and maximize the return on your localization investment. We assess customer interactions when they visit your website, make purchases, engage in live chats, open support tickets, or use social media.

#2 Customers Expect Digital Convenience in Their Native Language

More and more businesses are deploying powerful technological assets such as chatbots, AI-powered conversation tools, and advanced voice prompting technologies to improve the customer experience. Yet in order to provide multilingual customer support, you’ll likely need to go a step further by implementing machine translation, such as Smart MT, and over-the-phone interpretation.

You can improve multilingual customer experience by offering the following:

A mobile-friendly, multilingual user interface
Self-service options, such as a multilingual chatbot
Real-time over-the-phone interpretation for customer support

Person smiling while interpreting a customer call

#3 Customers Still Want to Reach Humans

While technological advancements are more sophisticated than ever, studies show customers still prefer to interact with real humans. In fact, 30% of customers say speaking with a knowledgeable and friendly agent is the most important aspect of customer service.

This is particularly valued for specific support cases including the need to:

Troubleshoot complex technical, or account issues
Handle financial issues and billing disputes
Escalate cases

However, if you only offer support in English, customers who speak another language will struggle to resolve these issues, which leads to frustration and broken brand experiences.

#4 Language is the First Aspect of Personalization in Customer Service

Today’s customers demand personalization. Communicating with your customers in their preferred language is the most important level of personalization. They will form their first impression based on the language you use. Still, modern customers are experiencing a language disconnect: most customer support interactions are conducted in English. Yet according to CSA Research, 72% of global customers prefer another language. Resolving this linguistic disparity will not only facilitate communication, but improve customer experience.

How Smart MT and Over-the-Phone Interpretation Services Can Help

Smart MT equips companies with a virtual translation tool to reach customers in their preferred language, quickly and easily. It helps build better multilingual customer experiences that work across languages, deliver consistent brand voice, and help increase customer satisfaction.

Smart MT’s key advantages include:

A single layer of terminology customization.
The ability to choose the best MT engines for different language pairs, industries, domains, and content types.
A seamless integration with your current tools and strategies, resulting in seamless translations for you and your clients.
Over-the-phone interpretation add-in that provides real-time interpretation services by highly-skilled linguists in over 350 languages.