Zendesk today introduced Real-Time Voice Translation for Zendesk Contact Center, bringing artificial intelligence-powered, two-way translation to live calls so customers and agents can speak naturally in their preferred languages.
Real-Time Voice Translation for Zendesk Contact Center helps businesses offer voice support in more languages without relying on interpreters, creating language-specific queues, or requiring customers to use slower support channels like email or SMS for sensitive or urgent requests.
"Customers should not have to choose between speaking the language that feels most natural to them and getting the support they need," said Shashi Upadhyay, Zendesk's president of product, engineering, and AI, in a statement. "When an issue is complex, sensitive, or urgent, people want to be understood, not routed somewhere else. Real-Time Voice Translation helps businesses make that kind of voice support available to more customers, while agents stay focused on solving the problem."
With Real-Time Voice Translation, agents can handle calls across supported languages without automatically transferring customers to a language-specific queue or interpreter, while teams can route calls based on the issue and agent expertise. Built directly into Zendesk Contact Center, Real-Time Voice Translation lets agents and administrators manage translation within the workflows they already use.
A customer's language can be specified for a call queue or selected by the agent when needed. Agents can turn two-way translation on or off without leaving the call, while administrators can control where translation is available, set language preferences, and choose whether to retain the original audio, translated audio, or both.