How to localize the chatbot for a global audience?

The money a business saves is as valuable as the money it earns. That's why many companies target process automation. By implementing new technologies, they reduce man hours and, as a result, spending.

This article overviews one of the most important business processes: well-built customer service. This process enhances user engagement but often requires 24/7 inclusion and handling of routine tasks.

The statistics show that 89% of users are more likely to make another purchase if they have had a positive customer experience with the company, and 84% expect immediate interaction when contacting the company. Also, 79% made the sale decision because they liked the customer support. At the same time, 40% of customers wouldn't buy in another language other than their native language, so coming to the new regional market means native support as well.

To summarize all of the above, companies need to provide permanent and professional customer support in different languages to handle customers from different regions. The solution for such a challenging task is unlocking the potential of chatbots and their localization. Based on the latest data, these helpers already cover around 30% of customer support teams’ tasks (communication), significantly reducing the teams' load.

What are chatbots?

In general, these are the applications that simulate conversation with humans. Chatbots can be split into the following main groups :

• Rule-based with a predefined set of rules and scripts. Mainly, they are used for FAQ and basic customer support;
• AI-powered with neural networks under the hood. This type can handle more complex tasks and imitate human responses.
• **The hybrid model **uses the advantages of the examples above and can provide responses from the database if the question is simple or "turn on" the AI.

The popularity of chatbots shows no signs of stopping. The market size in 2022 was valued at $4.7 billion and reached $5.7 billion in 2023.

Let's dive into chatbot localization!

Words matter! Especially when the human on the other side of communication waits for fast issue-solving. Imagine a situation where a customer using an e-commerce or banking platform needs a quick response and feels anxious due to an issue with their money. If, at that time, the chatbot provides irrelevant information, communicates illogical, or fails to understand specific terms, it can further agitate the customer. This situation is very likely to cost the business a client.

So, chatbot localization goes beyond simple translation and includes an initial setting of the flow for the regional users and adapting to language, tone, and local context. For instance, a global retail company chatbot can provide support and messages with greetings for regional holidays, sales, and hot offers.

Let's summarize the main requirements for the multilingual chatbots:

• Using regional language, idioms, phrases;
• Fully recognize (know) the company's terms;
• Fitting to local regulations (like GDPR in Europe);
• Provide the regional dates, times, currencies, and other units based on the local standards.

To handle all these conditions, companies need a technical team, a chatbot solution/framework, and a translating team that can adapt content professionally. Also, special attention should be paid to the TMS (translation management system), as it allows faster processing of the content translation and contains all the multilingual chatbot data in one place.

How can a TMS support chatbot localization?

As we mentioned at the start of this article, process automation is the "magic wand" that reduces businesses' costs. Because of this, the translation management system is a necessary part of chatbot localization.

With it, the process will be smooth, safe, and take much less time. Let's examine both options. Without TMS, your team should create the files for translators, send them to the team, constantly control them, and reply to the questions about the context. Then, after a few iterations of files back and forth (because it is an infrequent situation when the first variant is 100% perfect), the ready translation can be uploaded to the chatbot. To be honest, at this stage, we are already tired, but... Please note that your team should ensure that translation styles are synchronized, terms are correctly translated, nothing was missed, etc. Phew... and this was described as an easy process. It will become more complicated when adding any new language and translators. Also, without TMS, your team should care about a single source of truth and a place to store all translations.

With the translation management system, everything is much easier. Let's take a look at the Lingohub example of how this works.

• Easy file processing. You can manually import all chatbot data with our support of 40+ file formats (we also support the XLIFF format) or connect your repository directly and, in a few clicks, move the segments for translation or export the ready content back. → All integrations list

• The REST API. It allows direct integration with chatbot platforms like Dialogflow, Rasa, or Microsoft Bot Framework.

• Team synchronization. All your translators work in one environment, which allows collaboration without misunderstanding. All edits are live and visible to everyone (based on user permissions).

• Fast pre-translation + context is taken into account. With the machine translation power or translation memory database, you can pre-translate all your chatbot content in a minute. Moreover, if you add the terms to the glossary and fill in the style guide, the data will also be considered to provide the result.

• Quality checks automatically control the text segments' correctness and warn about errors like extra spaces, missed or extra HTML tags/placeholders, etc. This tool can save managers enormous amounts of time and effort. Take a look at the image below.

-** Easy file management.** If you need to split your data inside the system, you can create an unlimited number of projects or use the branching feature (for repository connections). Additionally, we provide labels that allow you to "mark" the needed segments for easy searching or filtering.

It was only a part of the features that Lingohub could suggest for successful chatbot localization. We also provide the tools which allow:

• comprehensive overview for managers;
• suitable a stressless processes for developers;
• robust tools for translators;
• and even specific instruments for designers.

Whether you are a small business, rising star, industry leader, or enterprise, Lingohub has a solution to fit your business-specific needs.

To sum up

Chatbots are great helpers that change the customer support industry and reduce human effort, especially when solving routine questions and requests. Despite this, companies can face a list of challenges regarding localization, as the chatbot should provide valuable results. Otherwise, businesses may suffer losses.

The best practice for simplifying chatbot localization is using a translation management system like Lingohub that can handle manual tasks and provide comprehensive transparency and suitability for all process participants. If you want to try it yourself, start a 14-day free trial! You can also book a demo call, during which our team will describe all Lingohub benefits and reply to questions.