{"id":7002,"date":"2014-05-05T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/translation\/2014\/05\/05\/language-can-make-the-difference-between-good-and-great-customer-service\/"},"modified":"2014-05-05T13:34:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T21:34:00","slug":"language-can-make-the-difference-between-good-and-great-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https://www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/translator/blog\/2014\/05\/05\/language-can-make-the-difference-between-good-and-great-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Language Can Make the Difference Between Good and Great Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"
The following is a guest post by the Microsoft Translator Partner, Lionbridge Technologies<\/a>, who developed GeoFluent<\/a> as solution to address the challenge of real-time translation of user generated content leveraging the Microsoft Translator<\/a> automatic translation service and customization capabilities of the Translator Hub<\/a>.<\/p>\n —————————————-<\/a><\/p>\n It’s the middle of the night in China, and you are still at the office, working on a complex installation that needs to be up and running by the time the boss comes in the next day. There is no room for error, and the pressure is on.<\/p>\n All of the sudden, a server malfunctions, and you realize your big project has stalled, and progress has come to a halt. What do you do?<\/p>\n Your first lifeline is the vendor’s “Contact Us” button on their website. A chat window opens up immediately with customer support on the other end. An agent works through the issue with you online, and suddenly the project is back underway. You breathe a deep sigh of relief.<\/p>\n What you don’t know is that the customer support agent only speaks English and was seamlessly interacting with you, even though your native language is Chinese. The communication was so seamless you weren’t even aware that a language gap existed. Somehow, it just worked. What you did know, however, is that, had immediate assistance from customer support not been available, you would likely be looking for a new vendor for future business.<\/p>\n The lesson learned is simple. Today’s business demands that companies of all types need to be able to respond and support their global customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That means that customer service personnel must be able to provide that support to customers regardless of their native language and time zone. <\/p>\n The challenge with that type of customer service and support is that neither native speakers or human translation are viable solution, both from a cost, response-time and scalability standpoint. Can machine translation solve this problem effectively?<\/p>\n As experts in translation and localization services, we at Lionbridge understood that while automatic translation provided the immediacy necessary to keep up with the translation demands of user-generated content, business clients demanded more. Translations had to at least be actionable and understandable even if they weren’t perfect.<\/p>\n The list of challenges that needed to be addressed to make automatic translation valid for these customer support scenarios were numerous. Some of the biggest hurdles included: <\/p>\n For this reason, we developed GeoFluent, a real-time automated translation solution designed to meet the needs of business clients in a scalable and cost effective manner. Building on Microsoft Translator as the underlying automatic translation service, GeoFluent provides an additional configuration layer that enables real-time conversations and content sharing with users who speak, read and write different languages. It is easily integrated into customer’s existing <\/a><\/p>\n We took these above mentioned challenges into account when developing GeoFluent. This SaaS-based application delivers the features that businesses require, including:<\/p>\n A successful machine translation experience must be seamless, actionable, and timely. GeoFluent makes this makes this possible for the demanding needs of customer service organizations to support a global customer base.<\/p>\n To learn more about how GeoFluent solutions are leveraging Microsoft Translator, go to:<\/p>\n GeoFluent Video <\/a><\/p>\n GeoFluent Partner Page <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Greg Belkin<\/span><\/p>\n Director, Product Marketing<\/span><\/p>\n\n
chat and community applications. <\/p>\n\n