Supporting customers in many languages without hiring for each one

Selling internationally is easier than ever. Supporting those customers is still hard. A shop with buyers in eight countries rarely has eight languages on the team — and a customer who can’t ask in their own language often doesn’t ask at all.

Two-way translation in chat changes the maths. Here’s how to use it well.

How two-way translation works

The idea is simple:

When the visitor and agent share a language, nothing is translated. Internal notes stay internal. In AskCub this works across 18 languages and is included from the Pro plan.

What changes for your team

• One queue for every market. No separate German inbox staffed twice a week.
• Agents stay in their strongest language. They write clearly and quickly, without wrestling with grammar.
• The AI agent joins in. When Cubby answers, it answers in the language the visitor wrote in, from the same knowledge base.

Where translation needs your help

Machine translation is very good at everyday customer service language. It’s less reliable with:

• slang and abbreviations (“asap”, “np”, local idioms),
• long, nested sentences with several conditions,
• ambiguous product terms that mean different things in different markets,
• numbers buried in words (“a couple of weeks”, “mid-next-month”).

So write the way you would for a busy reader: short sentences, one idea each, digits for numbers and dates.

Confirm the details that matter

For prices, addresses, sizes and order numbers, ask the customer to confirm. “Just to confirm: size M, delivered to Berlin, total €58 — correct?” A quick check prevents the expensive misunderstanding.

Greetings and the knowledge base

Greetings and knowledge base answers are shown as you wrote them. Two practical approaches:

• Write greetings in English (or another widely understood language) and let translation handle the conversation.
• Write your most common answers clearly and simply; the AI agent answers in the visitor’s language from them.

When to bring in a native speaker

Translation covers the everyday. Keep a human native speaker — even a freelancer for a few hours a week — for:

• complaints and sensitive situations,
• legal or contractual wording,
• marketing copy and product pages.

A rollout plan for cross-border teams

1. Look at visitor countries in your reports to find your top three non-native markets.
2. Turn on two-way translation.
3. Rewrite your top twenty answers in short, plain sentences.
4. Test in a private conversation in each language.
5. Review a sample of translated conversations each week for the first month.

The takeaway

You don’t need a polyglot team to make international customers feel at home. You need clear writing, two-way translation and the judgment to bring in a person when the stakes are high.

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