Getting Started with your Language IO App for Intercom
What does the app do?
The Language IO Translation app for Live Chat and Tickets enables your support agents to have multilingual conversations with all of your customers, regardless of whether they speak the same language or not.
For both Live Chat and Tickets, the app allows agents to translate:
- Incoming messages sent by a customer.
- Outbound messages to a customer.
- Chatbot transcripts
Setting up the App
See the dedicated article at Installing Language IO for Intercom Tickets & Live Chat.
Using the App
Defining your preferred language for Translation as an Agent
The Language IO Translation app defaults the agent’s preferred communication language to English for each Live Chat or Ticket. If the agent prefers to communicate in a different language, they can override the default language. To do so, go into Conversation Attributes and modify the LIO_Agent_Locale attribute. This value may vary depending on the set up of your organization. Most commonly, it is a locale code that looks something like this: es, de, fr, pt. This step has to be done for each Ticket or Live Chat. It is not necessary for agents who prefer to communicate in English.
Detecting the Customer’s Language and Translating Inbound Messages
To detect the customer’s language, agents must perform an initial translation. They can do it by clicking “Translate previous messages” in the Translation by Language IO app that resides on the sidebar. The translated content is then posted as an internal note.
(Optional) Enabling Auto Translation of Inbound Messages
Optionally, agents can enable auto-translation. This feature automatically translates all inbound (incoming) messages of the current Live Chat or Ticket, without requiring the agent to take any additional action. As an alternative, the agents can continue to click on “Translate previous messages” to translate all untranslated incoming messages.
Translating Outbound Messages
To translate their own replies to the end user, agents must add #lio at the beginning of an internal note. When they post the internal note, it is translated to the end user's language and the translation is sent as a public reply. Agents must repeat this action for each message they want to translate.