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If your callers don’t all speak the same language, there are three things to set and one trap to avoid.

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1. Transcription

Set the assistant’s language to the one you expect most. For a line that genuinely mixes languages, use Soniox for speech to text and fill in language hints with the languages you expect. It can follow a caller who switches mid-sentence, which a single-language setting can’t. Keep the hint list short. Listing eight languages makes every one of them slightly harder to recognise.

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2. The voice

Pick a voice that natively speaks the language your callers use most. A voice can usually pronounce another language, but the accent gives it away — and on a phone line, accent is most of what someone judges. If one line serves two languages with equal weight, consider two assistants on two numbers instead of one assistant doing both. It’s usually better for the caller and easier to tune.

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3. The prompt

The assistant replies in the language the caller uses. You don’t need to tell it to — but you do need to make sure nothing in your setup forces one language. Two things commonly do: The same applies to any Say step in a playbook — those are spoken word for word, in the language you wrote them. If you ask for recording consent and leave the consent prompt empty, Qall uses stock wording — and it only has stock wording in English and German. For any other language, the call isn’t recorded at all. Write your own consent prompt for every language you take calls in.

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Getting names and places right

Transcription struggles most with proper nouns, and more so across languages. Add them to keyterms in the speech settings — your hotel names, street names, product names. It’s five minutes and it fixes the thing prompts can’t.

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Checking it works

Call the assistant yourself in each language. The Accuracy figure on a call tells you how confident the transcription was — if it’s low for one language and fine for another, that’s where to work.