LTC Communicator – a web-based e-communication tool

143 LTC-Communicator – a web-based e-communication tool Adriane Rinsche The Language Technology Centre Ltd 5-7 Kingston Hill Kingston upon Thames Surrey KT2 7PW Tel. +44 20 8549 2359 Email: ARinsche@langtech.co.uk Abstract. Software vendors operating in international markets face two problems: first, products must be localised to meet the requirements of each target country; then there is the need to support diverse customers, where end-users may not speak the same language as the helpdesk. Localisation (new versions of screens, help text and documentation), while not cheap, is relatively well understood, with many companies providing expertise and tools. The problem of multilingual user support is much more complex, with few off-the-shelf solutions available. LTC-Communicator, a software product from the Language Technology Centre Ltd, offers an innovative and cost-effective response to this growing need. 1 Introduction Until recently, there were basically three possible strategies for multilingual support: � Maintaining a separate support centre in each target country; this is very expensive, and only really feasible for a large organisation with an established international presence; � Running a centralised help desk employing multilingual support staff; also potentially expensive (people with the right technical and linguistic qualifications are not easy to find, and user numbers may not justify experts in every language to be covered); a variant of this is the distributed ‘virtual help desk’ with remote support staff connected to a central database; � Using telephone interpreting services to offer multilingual support from a central location; expensive on a case-by-case basis, but perhaps justified where the volume of multilingual support is small and the demand sporadic. The LTC-Communicator now offers a fourth possibility: � Using translation software to incorporate multilingual capability into the help desk software itself, and integrating with web- based workflow and knowledge base facilities – reducing the dependence on human experts to manage communication. 2 Business case LTC-Communicator allows a software vendor (or any service organisation) to run a centralised support centre without the expense of training and equipping local support desks in different countries, or employing multilingual staff; the end-user and the support engineer do not need to share a common language. For example, for an English-speaking help desk supporting German users: � The user enters a trouble ticket in German, via the software company’s support portal; � The trouble ticket is routed through the LTC- Communicator translation components; � The request is displayed to the support engineer in English; � The engineer prepares the solution, also in English, to be automatically routed back through the translation environment; � The user can then view the solution (or status information) in German. An attraction of this solution is that it can integrate with any existing web-based e- communication solution that is capable of communicating via XML and can be configured to provide flexible workflow; incoming messages in the company’s ‘native’ 144 language are passed directly into the normal communication workflow, while ‘foreign’ messages are routed through the LTC-Communicator automated translation environment. Similarly, response messages may be directed straight to the requesting …

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