By Charles Wooters of NextIT and Daniel Marcu of Language Weaver, 07/17/09

Virtual agents can engage with customers anywhere in the world in any language and through any communication channel. The good ones have all the right answers, and they embody the best qualities of your best human agents. They can handle huge volumes of customer queries, save money and time, shorten hold times and keep customers from wandering away to competitors. What’s not to like?

Read the article by Charles and Daniel on CRM Buyer and E-Commerce Times.

SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq:SPSS), the leading global provider of Predictive Analytics software and solutions, today announced that its Predictive Text Analytics customers now have access to translation services on demand through its partnership with Language Weaver. The software as a service (SaaS) delivery mechanism enables market researchers and organizations that gather survey feedback in many languages to receive cost-effective and precise high-speed translation capabilities.

With the use of this service, customers can now obtain automated translation of unstructured data sources (open-ended survey responses, call center notes, email, blogs, RSS feeds, wikis and social networks) across 30 languages into common English in order to fully understand preferences, motivations and intentions on a global scale.

Swamy Viswanathan, vice president of products at Language Weaver, said, “Language Weaver is pleased to be pairing our powerful automated translation technology with world class Predictive Analytics from SPSS to enable companies to quickly analyze and act on multilingual customer feedback from across the globe within a single application. Together, we enable companies to listen to the Voice of the Customer, in the language of the customer, and convert it into action through appropriate response.”

You can read the complete news release here.

Avatar Firm Next IT to Incorporate Language Weaver’s Solution

By Brendan B. Read
Senior Contributing Editor
TMCnet.com

Avatars who understand natural-language-posed questions via IVR and the Web are becoming the next generation ‘customer service assistants’: personalizing the interface between humans and machines.

Thanks to a new strategic partnership between avatar developer Next IT and Language Weaver, which provides statistically-based automated language translation, these avatars will now communicate in the tongue of customers’ choice. With Spanish, French, and increasingly Chinese being used in North America and with customers from all over the world interacting with firms via the Internet, this solution is timely and needed. It is much less expensive to use multilingual avatars than multilingual agents or translators and more convenient to communicate with customers via them if they are on your Web site compared with asking them to call.

Read the complete TMCnet.com article about NextIT and Language Weaver here.

There’s a good chance you have seen virtual customer support avatars that organizations like the US Army (via “Sergant Star”), Continental Airlines and Merrill Lynch are using to communicate with their customers. These sophisticated avatars are powered by NextIT. You type or ask a question and the virtual customer service specialist – the “ActiveAgent” – verbally answers your question for you and provides written answers and links as well.

Today Language Weaver is pleased to announce is that NextIT’s ActiveAgent virtual customer service reps will be able to communicate across scores of different languages thanks to Language Weaver’s automated translation software.

By implementing Language Weaver’s technology, Next IT customers will be able to enhance user experience by answering a user’s natural language questions across multiple languages with incredible accuracy.

Read the complete media release here.

At SPSS Directions 2009 European Conference, attendees will gather to hear about the latest trends and best practices in statistics, data mining, market research, predictive analytics and business intelligence technology. It’s a one-of-a-kind forum where they will find all the knowledge and resources they need to ‛Predict Tomorrow Today.’

As an SPSS technology partner, Language Weaver will attend this event and can talk with you about the Language Weaver integrations with SPSS text mining and survey applications to access information across multiple languages for decision making. To meet with Language Weaver at this event, please contact us at www.languageweaver.com/contact

For more information about the event, visit: http://www.spss.com/spssdirections/emea/

Gilbaine’s NewsShark Team reported recently about the new partnership between Language Weaver and SDL:

“SDL and Language Weaver announced a strategic partnership to deliver Language Weaver’s translation software tightly integrated into SDL’s GIM platform and as part of SDL Knowledge-based Translation System (SDL KbTS). Language Weaver automated translation solutions have been deployed for the enterprise and large web properties to deliver translations of digital content. This partnership will give SDL customers the opportunity to deliver effective communication to customers across many more languages.”

Leonor Ciarlone, Lead Analyst, Content Globalization for the Gilbaine group, had this to say about the news:

“Gilbane’s 2009 research on product content globalization reveals a growing need to expand customer support case avoidance programs to include knowledge bases that support multinational expansion. A natural increase in multilingual content volume and resource requirements occurs as a result. Enterprise interest in machine translation as an enabler of business processes that combine automation and post-editing practices is on the rise to combat the cost of technology-enabled multilingual customer support.”

Read the complete NewsShark article on the Gilbaine Globalization Blog.

Free Webinar: Join us for a complimentary, live webinar on Wednesday, May 27 to learn how to improve the global customer experience and control translation costs by incorporating automated translation solutions from Language Weaver and SDL as part of your Global Information Management (GIM) solution. With strategic insight from The Gilbane Group, this webinar will show you how you can now communicate like you’ve never communicated before!

Speakers:
Sophie Hurst, Director - Product Marketing, SDL
Hannah Grap, Director of Corporate Marketing, Language Weaver
Leonor Ciarlone, Lead Analyst, The Gilbane Group

Register now for the May 27 Webinar.

Common Sense Advisory Analysts Don DePalma and Benjamin Sargent wrote about Language Weaver’s global partnership deal with SDL today on their firm’s blog, Global Watchtower. Here’s an excerpt of their analysis:

“This partnership is a win-win for both companies. SDL gets new SMT technology to upgrade its oft-updated but long-in-the-tooth rules-based MT engine (RBMT), while government-centric Language Weaver gains a commercial sales channel without having to build out its own expensive sales force. While it’s not the hybrid SMT-RBMT technology that we predicted in our 2006 “Automated Translation Technology” report, this approach melds two engines with mainstream and emerging-marktet languages into SDL’s product line. Customers will benefit from the broader palette of languages and integrated workflow. With MT use set to climb steadily in the coming years, SDL is now positioned to ride the tiger.”

Click here to read the rest of the Global Watchtower post.

Enterprises can reach new global audiences and expand language translation capacity using automated translation integrated with SDL Global Information Management solutions

Maidenhead, UK & Los Angeles, USA – 28 April 2009 – SDL, the leading provider of Global Information Management (GIM) solutions and Language Weaver today announced a strategic partnership to deliver Language Weaver’s translation software tightly integrated into SDL’s GIM platform and as part of SDL Knowledge-based Translation System® (SDL KbTS™).

[Click here to read the complete media release about today's news.]

SDL customers such as Best Western, CNH, IFS, Renault and RIM have already deployed SDL’s automated translation as part of an enterprise GIM solution for applications such as online support, technical documentation and e-commerce.

Language Weaver automated translation solutions have been deployed for the enterprise and large web properties to deliver compelling translations of digital content. This partnership will give SDL customers the opportunity to deliver effective communication to customers across many more languages. In the following podcast, Hannah Grap, Director of Corporate Marketing at Language Weaver (left) and Sophie Hurst, Director of Product Marketing at SDL (right), discuss the new global partnership and what it means for the companies and their customers:

[Click here to learn how the new SDL-Language Weaver partnership program can help your business now.]