How to prevent agents from being assigned conversations in languages they do not speak?

Question

Hello!Our team uses multiple teams to organize our workload based on tasks and communication channels. Adding language-based separation would create an excessive number of additional teams, making it difficult to manage shifts efficiently.We've found that:We cannot add "skills" to agents to designate the languages they should handle.	Workflows do not support the "do not assign to" option.Is there an alternative way to prevent agents from being assigned conversations in languages they do not speak, other than creating separate teams?

Nathan Sudds · Accepted Answer

One thing we did previously with a client on the topic of language was install some 3rd party translation apps in the Intercom interface to automatically translate the users messages and send responses in the target language. I'm wondering if the new Copilot beta might also be able to help with this as well now where it can understand the language and enable any agent to better handle the responses even in unfamiliar languages? That could be a very interesting use case. Even the translation tools at the time were quite good this was before AI implementations like Fin and Copilot, it helped a lot.

Tereza Zaloni · Answer

Hello @Nathan Sudds!Thank you for your thoughtful response and suggestions.Our team primarily handles workload in Greek and English. While all agents support English and some are multilingual, there are a few agents who do not speak Greek.Indeed, we can direct conversations based on language, but the volume of requests in languages other than Greek and English is not substantial enough to justify creating separate teams or implementing language-based assignments.Additionally, all our Greek-speaking agents also cover English. Thus, creating workflows to assign agents to both language cases would require adding each agent separately, which could be challenging due to our team's size.Most importantly, if we proceed with language-based assignments, it raises concerns about potentially conflicting with our existing assignment rules based on task teams.Given these considerations, the most straightforward solution for us remains to exclude these specific agents from handling conversations in Greek.I would be happy to discuss any further insights or suggestions you may have regarding this issue.

Join the Intercom Community 🎉

Intercom Customers and Employees

Login to the community

Intercom Customers and Employees

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded