How are users' languages set in Support?

Question

How are users' languages set in Support? 

Background

If you support multiple languages through Support, it may be a essential to understand how your users' languages are set. Since there is more than one way a language could be set on user profiles, this tip covers all potential situations: 

• How user languages are set if they're created by an agent
• How user languages are set if auto-detection is utilized
• What can I do if a user's language is incorrectly set? 

Answer

How user languages are set if they're created by an agent:
If an admin or agent creates a user, their language is automatically set to match the default language of your Support account. To change your default language, visit the Admin icon () in the sidebar > Settings > Account. Under the Localization tab, select the language you would like as the default.

See Adding multiple languages to Zendesk Support for instruction on how to set your default language. 

How user languages are set if auto-detection is utilized:
This is only applicable to users who have not yet been created in your Support account (aka: unregistered users)

1. Email detection: If an end-user is not created in your Support account prior to submitting a ticket (or if they are created, but their language is blank) then their language is automatically detected by the text contained in the body of their first email sent to your Support account. Subsequent emails/tickets will not overwrite the end-user's language, even if another language is consistently used; you will want to manually set their language to resolve this. 
   
   
2. Help Center: When an unregistered end-user selected a language in the Help Center menu bar and submits a request from that language, their user is created and their language is identified with the language of the Help Center they were viewing upon ticket submission. If they switch to a different Help Center of a new language and submit another ticket there, their profile language switches to the later language. However, you can manually set their language if this is their preferred language.
   
   
3. Web widget: Zendesk can detect a user's preferred language from their Web browser preference setting. The accept-language header, which is passed via HTTP, contains information about the user's language preference. If that is present, the language can be detected upon user creation and will set the language accordingly (as long as you have the language added to your Support account). You can opt to override their browser preference by customizing your Web Widget. See Advanced customization of your Web Widget for instruction on this task. 
   
   
4. Support SDK: If you are using the latest version of the Support SDKs, the language for new unregistered end-users will match their device locale. If you don't support the device's locale, then the user's language will be set to your account's default language. 

What can I do if a user's language is incorrectly set?
Since the above information will only set the user language upon user creation, you may find that your users' languages are set incorrectly. You may utilize any of the following options to resolve these errors:

• Manually change the user's language; this is done one at a time. 
  
  
• You can opt to reset all end-users' languages. This is a good catch-all solution if you want the end-users' next submitted ticket to set their language. You could also define the languages (instead of leaving the language column blank) if you know the preferred language already.