A polyglot is someone who can speak at least four languages. Although a topic for another time, the question for your polyglot friends is “Which language do you dream in?” For today, the question is “Is your contact centre chat capability a polyglot?”

To maintain the diversity of their campuses, higher education institutions recruit international students who may not speak the institution’s primary language for administration and instruction. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency for the 2020/2021 academic year shows that there were 605,130 international students at UK Universities.

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That’s about 22% of the 2,751,865 students enrolled in Higher Education institutions in the UK. So about 1 in 5 students are international. Interestingly, about 75% of those international students are from outside of the EU (Studying-in-UK.org):

  • China 32%
  • India 19%
  • Nigeria 5%
  • United States 4%
  • Hong Kong 4%
  • Pakistan 3%
  • Malaysia 2.5%
  • Saudi Arabia 2%
  • Canada 1.5%
  • Singapore 1.5%

With a modern communications platform, Universities can improve the overall engagement experience by removing language barriers. One example is by enabling international students to use their preferred language, say Mandarin, while they conduct a live chat with a University’s contact centre agent who is using English. 8x8’s Multilingual Support for Chat enables exactly that experience.

With this capability, prospective students can chat in their preferred language. Agents can support those chat-based discussions in their preferred language, which may be different. 8x8 Contact Centre associates primary and one or more secondary languages of fluency to each agent. If the prospective student requests a chat in an agent supported language, the chat will be conducted in that language. Otherwise, the student can use their preferred language and the automatic translation capability will convert it to the agent’s preferred language.

Languages supported include:

  • Arabic
  • Croatian
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Hindi
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Mandarin - Simplified
  • Mandarin - Traditional
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Vietnamese
  • Welsh

How it works

This flow diagram shows how the experience works. Essentially, when the student initiates a chat with an agent, they select their preferred language. The chat application checks whether or not that language selection is one associated with that agent. If yes, then both the student and agent can chat in the student’s selected language. If that agent does not speak that language, then the Auto Translate capability is enabled.

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Here’s an example of the experience:

  • A prospective student visiting your website initiates a chat by clicking the chat button. Note that 8x8 will provide you with the code to drop into your website or application to instantly create the chat button.
  • A pre-chat form is presented to them that includes a preferred language choice.

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  • The prospective student completes the form including the selection of their preferred language and then submits the chat request.

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  • The request enters the chat queue in 8x8 Contact Centre and is offered to an agent.

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  • The 8x8 Contact Centre Control Panel indicates the language choice for the chat.
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  • When the agent accepts the chat, it will be conducted in one of the languages they support.
  • Automatic translation is used only when the prospective student requests to use a language that is not supported by the agent.
  • Automatic translation will convert the potential student’s chat to the agent's primary language and vice-versa.

The result is that the prospective student chat experience is conducted in their preferred language:

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And the agent experience is conducted in one of their suported languages:

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Why is this ability important?

Language is at the core of culture. It’s an integral part of who we are.Think about when you travel to a place that doesn’t speak your language. How comforting and almost euphoric it is when you discover someone who can understand and talk with you. Empowering that prospective student to use their preferred language establishes your organisation as one that makes an effort to understand them at the cultural level.

The channel of communication is becoming equally as important. The smartphone has changed so many things including the methods we use to communicate. Our recent research with UK higher education professionals found additional evidence of the smartphone impact. Respondents indicated that they believe the ability of current communications systems to support preferred channels of communication varies by generation.

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That means that 65% of current communication systems are not supporting the preferred communications channels of Gen Z. Why not? Are they using some form of telepathy the rest of us don’t know about? Turns out it’s just WhatsApp:

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So the opportunity for universities is the ability to empower staff with the ability to communicate with students, prospective students and parents using their preferred communication channels, in their preferred language when possible. 8x8 Contact Centre’s Multilingual Support for Chat is an example of being able to provide both a preferred channel with support for preferred languages, not unlike traditional phone interpretation services. But, it’s just a component of a much bigger omnichannel to consider:

Omnichannel routing includes these channels:

  • Intelligent IVR
  • Automatic Call Distribution
  • Predictive Dialer
  • Digital Channels - (includes chat)
  • Virtual Agent

Each of these topics is a much longer discussion, so I’ll stay focused on chat and the digital channels. Digital channels include:

  • Email
  • Chat
  • SMS
  • Social Media
  • Messaging Apps
  • Co-browse

Chat is an important channel in the digital channel family. Prospective students will communicate across different channels, devices and even languages as they look for the educational experience best suited for them.

So when evaluating modern communications platforms, make sure their ability to keep staff connected with prospective students regardless of device, communication channel, location and even language is an important criteria that it must be able to deliver.