Detect a contact's language in Inbox

Inbox supports more than 60 languages. When a message comes in, Inbox detects the contact's language and adds it to the contact's details (agents can also add a language manually).

Language detection makes it possible to do the following:

• Route conversations to teams with specific language skills.
• Use auto responders that respond to contacts in their language.
• Send customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys in a contact’s language.
• Store a contact’s language in your CRM.
• Run reports based on specific languages.

Turn on language detection

Turn on language detection and choose which languages to detect automatically.

1. In Inbox, select Settings, and then select Admin settings.
2. Expand Routing and automation, and then select Language detection.
3. Turn language detection on and select the languages you want. For the best experience, select a maximum of 10 languages.

How is language determined?

An AI language engine processes customer messages to determine language. An agent can also manually set the language for a contact.

If the engine has enough content to determine the language with the first message, it will do so. For example, the engine would detect a message like "Hello, I have a question about my invoice. Can you please help me out?" as 97.5% English and set the language to English.

If the engine doesn't have enough content to determine the language with a message, it tries again. For example, if a conversation flows like the following:

1. "Hi" - The engine won't process this because the message is too short (less than 25 characters).
2. "Hello, I have a question about an invoice" - The engine detects this as 87.8% English but it needs to meet the certainty threshold of 90%.
3. “Can you please explain why the amount is higher than last month? It seems to me that some additional charges have been applied.” - The engine detects this as 99.3% English, and the language is set to English.

What languages are supported?

You can find a list of the most recent supported languages in Admin settings. Expand Routing and automation, select Language detection, and then select +Language to see a list of supported languages. The following languages are supported: