If your business sells goods or services over the Internet, it is likely that your customers are not only from the country in which you are located. If your chatbot, which can help users with everything from making a purchase to customer support, only speaks Russian, you may be alienating whole segments of potential customers.
If you want to make your business more accessible and welcoming to new markets around the world, a multilingual chatbot is a very effective solution.
What a multilingual chatbot can do for your business:
Creating a multilingual bot is a smart move for any business looking to reach more than just customers in their own country. Chatbots that can communicate in multiple languages can help you:
Improve the customer experience 📈 A survey of online shoppers from ten countries found that 75% of them want to shop in their native language or don't want to shop at all. So, even a user who speaks English as a second language will enjoy a faster and easier interaction with your brand if it takes place in their native language.
Increase your customer base 👥 Imagine all the potential customers in the world who might be interested in your brand but don't speak Russian. With a multilingual bot, you can reach out to them to showcase your products or services, answer questions, and move them through your sales funnel. A polyglot bot can give you the opportunity to expand your customer base exponentially!
Stand out from the competition 🌟 A bot that speaks the language the customer prefers will help them feel understood and can provide a better service. This attention to the quality of the user experience will give you a serious competitive advantage when dealing with an international audience. If a potential customer has a choice between your company, which they know speaks their language, and a competitor who only speaks Russian, your brand is much more likely to win their business.
Saving time, energy and resources ⏱️ Training your staff in every possible language of your potential customers is certainly not possible. Creating a multilingual chatbot is a much easier and more cost-effective way to handle your multilingual customer base in all aspects, from marketing and sales to support.
How do I create a multilingual bot?
The idea that your bot can speak multiple languages can seem daunting, especially if you don't speak those languages yourself. The good news is that with PuzzleBot, you can do this in just three steps!
At first, creating a separate bot for each language might seem like the best solution. But instead, the best option is to create multiple threads (one thread for each language) within a single bot. To do this in PuzzleBot, follow these instructions:
Add text. We recommend creating all the content you want to have available in multiple languages with text in English.
Duplicate this flow. Then duplicate the flow you just created. Replace the English text with the text translated into another language. Repeat this process for as many languages as you need the flow to be available.
Direct users to the desired language. We recommend setting up your bot's welcome message so that it prompts users to select their preferred language using buttons or quick replies. Then let each of those choices lead to a thread in the appropriate language.
What to pay attention to when developing:
On the semantic distinctions of words.
Semantics as a linguistic science studies the semantic meaning of language units, such as words and expressions. When creating multilingual bots, you cannot mechanically translate, because the meanings of words in different languages may be different.
For example, in Russian there are words blue and blue, and we understand the difference between them, but in English both colors are called blue. The expressions Good evening and Good night are technically the same, but the first sounds like a greeting and the second sounds like a goodbye. These are the semantic differences.
On the depth of translation.
A translator interprets the meaning of a text in one language and creates an equivalent text in another. His main task is to convey the meaning of the original without distortion.
There is a type of translation which requires a higher skill of the specialist and creative approach - transcreation. It is used in advertising or marketing purposes, for transferring film titles. A specialist who is engaged in transcreation must be focused on the new target audience and make the text as understandable to them as possible.
To cultural differences between countries
When there are significant cultural differences between the users of a multilingual chatbot, the personality of the bot in each market has to be created anew. For example, there's a game with a voice bot in the guise of a good-natured letter carrier.
A Frenchman will be delighted if the virtual character asks how his daughter's birthday went. An Englishman would be wary. He will think, "How does that strange letter carrier know it was my daughter's birthday yesterday?
In one country, small talk is accepted before getting down to business; in another region, they don't like to waste time. In China it is considered indecent to say "no" openly. Culture influences the nature of the bot, the vocabulary and structure of questions and answers, and the purpose and structure of the user experience. All of this needs to be reflected in the bot script.
On the testing process
It makes sense to test with native speakers and those for whom the language used is a second or third language. Theoretically, there can be a situation like this: a Russian-speaking client wants to use the bot during a trip abroad and selects English, if there is no option with his native language.
Join our active community in Telegram and happy multilingual bots!
