Messaging includes language settings that allow you to specify a default language for conversation bots, and lets you configure them to speak in multiple languages for an improved customer experience. Using these settings, you can set the language used in a single-language bot, or create multilingual bots.
This article includes the following topics:
Supporting single-language bots
By default, your bot language is set to your account's default language.
To specify a default language for a bot
- In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
- Click Manage bots.
- Click the bot you want to update.
- Expand the Language section, and use the drop-down to select your language.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page.
Note: For consistency and ease of comprehension, the default language selection should match the language your conversation is written in.
Supporting multilingual bots
If your customer base uses multiple languages for communication, there are a number of settings throughout Suite that should be considered, including:
Activating automatic translation for a bot
In your bot settings, you can activate a feature which automatically translates the text elements in a web or mobile conversation bot you create yourself, including:
These elements should be created in the bot's default language, as described in the previous section. The bot uses the language setting to determine the source language when translating text.
To activate automatic translation
- In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
- Click Manage bots.
- Click the bot you want to update.
- Expand the Language section, and use the drop-down to select your language.
- Click the box to activate automatic translation.
- In Select languages for automatic translation, specify the customer-side languages you want to include in the automatic translation process. You can open the drop-down and scroll through the options, or begin typing to filter the language options.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page.
- Republish the bot after changing the language.
Automatic translation for messaging automatically translates the bot text for your customers. If the Web Widget is embedded in a help center, the bot text is translated into the customer's selected help center language. If the Web Widget is embedded in your website, the bot text is translated into the customer's selected browser language.
Translating help center articles
You can suggest help center articles in a conversation to direct customers to information that may help them self-solve their questions.
To offer help center articles in multiple languages, you’ll need to activate those languages in your Guide settings, then add translated versions of those articles to your help center.
For more information, see Configuring your help center to support multiple languages and Localizing help center content.
Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace
After taking over a conversation from the bot, agents can use the native translation feature in the Zendesk Agent Workspace to communicate with customers and other agents across multiple languages. This feature is activated by default for all customers using Agent Workspace, but is only available for agents with a Chat seat.
For more information, see Translating conversations in the Zendesk Agent Workspace.