If your business currently serves (or plans to serve) customers in more than one language, leveraging some form of language translation is vital for unlocking sustainable growth. The alternative? Hiring native speakers to build what amounts to duplicate versions of your existing departments (marketing, customer service, sales, etc.) for each language. It isn’t difficult to see why this approach is neither logical nor scalable.
High-quality, tech-powered language translation services enable your organization to maximize the reach, impact, and revenue-generating potential of its communications across many different languages and regions. Read on for four reasons why you shouldn’t wait to get started with first-rate language translation.
Accelerated global growth
Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of organizations that are using technology to accelerate global growth. Artificial intelligence has been a major driver of this “Fourth Industrial Revolution” as some are calling it, which the World Economic Forum says “has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world.” Technologies like AI are doing this by enabling unprecedented gains in human efficiency, productivity, and access to information at an exponential rate.
In the same vein, machine translation has transformed language from a hard-to-solve operational constraint into a growth lever. Modern language translation services for business built upon this technology provide a centralized way to operationalize language more efficiently and at scale. If you’re looking to expand your business, AI can help your organization unlock the benefits of globalization, such as a larger customer base and a deeper talent pool.
More accurate website content
Having made the decision to tap into new markets and increase the number of languages your company serves, you need to think about translating your content so that it reflects the same brand message while feeling like it was written specifically for a given region.
A nondigital example of this is Coca Cola’s famous “share a Coke” campaign, where the beverage giant printed first names on bottles that were specially tailored for different global regions. In China, where it’s considered impolite to refer to people by their first name, Coca Cola showcased cultural consideration by using affectionate nicknames such as “close friend” and “classmate.”
The process of adapting content to certain audiences, dialects, and cultural preferences is known as localization. In the 2021 Unbabel LangOps Survey, we found that website content translation is a top priority for 42% of localization teams.
Because this type of content is static and may only undergo changes or additions a few times a year, such translation projects are not typically time-sensitive. And because web pages are translated once and then viewed by thousands or even millions of people over the course of several years, they must be of the highest quality possible and consistent with your organization’s unique style and tone.
This process often involves a higher level of human involvement compared to other types of tech-enabled language translation. For example, when you have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page translated by Unbabel, the content is first translated by AI, then a team of human editors, and finally a senior editor gives it a comprehensive review to ensure total authenticity and accuracy.
Enhanced customer service
Another area where language translation services can provide a major advantage is customer service. Similar to website content, quality is of the utmost importance here: In our 2021 Global Multilingual CX Report of more than 2,700 international consumers, a staggering 92% of respondents said that poor customer service, even in their native language, will impact their trust and loyalty toward a brand.
In addition to accuracy and cultural nuance, people highly value timeliness in their customer service communications. The same customer experience survey also found that nearly half of respondents consider quick response times to be a top customer support priority (47%), followed by fast resolution times (46%).
Today’s professional translation services and solutions run the gamut from machine-only (such as Google Translate) to human-only (such as a translation agency). Machine-only options are fast but quality isn’t always maintained; human-only options are precise but can be expensive, time-consuming, and hard to scale. Is it possible to get the best of both worlds?
With an AI-powered, human-refined translation solution, you can. Unbabel gives you the ability to quickly start servicing new languages and increase agent productivity without having to hire additional staff or incur significant costs. Our customer service AI solution also allows teams to handle unpredictable surges in customer demand while still maintaining and even improving the metrics that matter most.
Unified customer experience
When looking to cultivate customer loyalty across the globe, providing a consistently excellent customer experience (CX) with language translation services is key. In fact, research from PwC discovered that one in three global consumers say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.
Human-in-the-loop AI such as Unbabel allows organizations to cost-effectively provide customers with a unified, personalized CX no matter what language they speak. For instance, we helped Panasonic’s European customer care team overcome linguistic barriers and contextual differences while also reducing the cost of providing support in five languages by 60%. This blend of human and AI translation will help all of your agents speak the same language: the language of the customer.
See the future of language translation in action
From global growth acceleration to improved multilingual customer service, your organization can’t afford to ignore the benefits of language translation services. Now that you have a better understanding of the choices that are available today and the differences between human and machine translation, are you curious to find out why a combination of the two is the best option? Take a tour of Unbabel and we’ll show what the power of augmented machine translation can do for your business.
