Have you ever experienced the language barrier in customer support? It’s one of the trickiest support issues to overcome. Most of the time, you have to use machine translation apps that aren’t completely accurate. In some particularly bad instances, using these kinds of apps can result in poor translations, grammatical mistakes, and syntactical blunders. If you want accurate translations so you can fully interact with your customers, you’d have to hire a translator on a case-by-case basis, which would be costly and highly impractical.
For a long time, we envisioned a world in which customer support had no language barriers. That’s why we’re so excited to introduce you to our new Zendesk app. We’ve spent the last few months working on a brand new app that uses real humans to translate text, and we couldn’t be happier about the result. We’d like to walk you through the features and give you a behind-the-scenes look to show you why Translate By Humans is quickly becoming one of the most preferred translation apps on Zendesk.
The Case for Human Translation
We’re firm believers in the idea that humans should be at the core of the business we do. However, we’ll be perfectly honest; we know most people are fine with automated translation apps because they’re fast and mostly accurate. Sure, humans will naturally do a better job than machines, but why not go with the fast and easy option?
Even though machine translation is often good enough, for us, good enough isn’t good enough. While a machine might be able to quickly translate a piece and get you 90% of a perfect result, it’s often that last 10% that can make all the difference. Even one seemingly innocent mistake can change the meaning or tone of a sentence or even an entire section.
Translation is a multifaceted process that requires several important criteria:
- the accuracy of meaning and intent
- attention to logical and syntactic structures
- preservation of the nuances in the original language
- regard for idioms and other cultural expressions
Keep those criteria in mind as we take a quick look at how machine translation works.
There are three main types of machine translation systems: rule-based, statistical, and neural. Rule-based systems use grammatical rules to govern translation. With statistical systems, computers “learn” to translate by studying large amounts of human-translated text. With neural systems, machines use neural networks to break down translation into chunks.
The problem with all of these? In all of these systems, the computers doing the translating don’t actually understand the languages they’re working with. On the other hand, a human translator has an intimate knowledge of the language, so he or she will be able to translate with near-perfect accuracy while preserving the meaning, intent, and expressions present in the original text.
How Zendesk Provides the Perfect Solution to Customer Support Translation
Convinced humans are best for translation? We think so too. That’s why we developed an app for Zendesk. If you’re not familiar with Zendesk, it’s a customer engagement platform that provides a seamless support experience for your customers. Zendesk is probably best known for its support and ticketing platform, but the Zendesk family of products also includes live chat, call centre software, and analytics. Together, the Zendesk suite helps businesses create immersive and holistic support.
One of the great things about Zendesk is its depth. There’s a lot more to the platform than at first meets the eye. Consider its Apps Directory, a marketplace of apps that helps you get the most out of Zendesk. This is where you’ll find the Translate By Humans app, and it’s a super simple matter to get it integrated with Zendesk.
Here’s how the app works. Whenever you get a support message in a foreign language, it’s automatically machine-translated so you and your team can read it in your native language. Then, when one of your customer support team members writes a message back, a human translator from TBH personally translates that message, which is then sent to the customer. This process takes the least amount of time and allows you to provide streamlined, frictionless support no matter what language your customers use.
Best of all, this entire process is completely contained within Zendesk, thanks to the app interface. You never have to leave Zendesk itself to get high-quality translation in a matter of hours. This makes it easy for your entire team to request translations as needed without it interfering with customer support in general.
Low Cost, High-Quality Translation: Is It Really Possible?
You may have personal experience with some cheaper translation services, and if you do, it’s probably neutral at best. In the world of translation, you get what you pay for, which means that lower prices often mean cheaper quality. We took this problem and turned it on its head so we could provide accessible pricing while turning out high-quality results.
The secret? We employ professional translators from all over the world working 24/7 to provide the best possible translation quality. Our translators have at least 3 years of working experience in translation (and often much more), and we only hire translators who have academic degrees and membership in a professional association acclaimed by the translation industry in each translator’s country. Because our translators are so experienced, it’s easy for them to turn around perfect translations in just a few hours.
We also don’t want to burden our customers with hidden or excessive fees, so we’ve stripped back the pricing to its bare essentials. There are no unnecessary charges to deal with; you pay only for the translation itself. This minimalist pricing attitude is what allows us to offer such low rates while keeping the quality sky high.
This helps streamline the way you pay too. We operate on a pre-payment plan, so you deposit how much you think you’ll spend, and when you run out, you simply reload your account. We alert you when your funds are running dry so you have plenty of time to reload. And best of all, it’s just $10/month as part of your base fee to add another support person to your account.
Of course, we prioritise speed as well. Our global network of translators ensures expedited turnaround times, so if you get a flood of foreign customer support messages every hour, we’ve got you covered too. Our average turnaround time is extremely short, usually only a few hours. For example, a whopping 3,000 words usually only take about 6-8 hours to complete. Often, that means you can respond to most of your foreign support tickets the same day you get them.
Conclusion
In our humble opinion, translation is all about humanness. Since translation helps humans communicate, it only makes sense to build a service around human translators. You no longer have to choose between super low prices and super high quality––you can get both. If you’re interested, you can join legendary companies like Google, Nike, and Vogue (who have all used our services) by using our Zendesk app.
