As AI agents take on more of the customer journey, voice remains a critical and growing channel for customer service, representing 40% of contact center volume, according to Zendesk research. Language differences can make it harder to staff these calls and connect customers with the right agent. Zendesk today introduced Real-Time Voice Translation for Zendesk Contact Center, bringing AI-powered, two-way translation to live calls so customers and agents can speak naturally in their preferred languages. It helps businesses offer voice support in more languages without relying on interpreters, creating language-specific queues, or requiring customers to use slower support channels like email or SMS for sensitive or urgent requests.

For contact centers that provide voice support across markets, multilingual staff can be difficult to find, and hiring dedicated agents can be expensive when demand for a particular language is low or changes across regions, time zones, and peak periods. This makes it difficult to maintain enough staff to support every community a business serves, often leading to longer wait times, transfers, coverage gaps, and routing friction. These constraints can also make it harder to expand into new communities and markets.

“Customers should not have to choose between speaking the language that feels most natural to them and getting the support they need,” said Shashi Upadhyay, Zendesk President of Product, Engineering and AI. “When an issue is complex, sensitive, or urgent, people want to be understood, not routed somewhere else. Real-Time Voice Translation helps businesses make that kind of voice support available to more customers, while agents stay focused on solving the problem.”

Real-Time Voice Translation gives contact centers a more flexible way to handle multilingual calls. Agents can handle calls across supported languages without automatically transferring customers to a language-specific queue or interpreter, while teams can route calls based on the issue and agent expertise. Built directly into Zendesk Contact Center, Real-Time Voice Translation lets agents and administrators manage translation within the workflows they already use. One workforce can serve more customers in more languages through one system and one set of workflows, helping businesses respond more flexibly to demand, lower the cost of multilingual support, and expand voice support as they enter new markets.

A customer’s language can be specified for a call queue or selected by the agent when needed. Agents can turn two-way translation on or off without leaving the call, while administrators can control where translation is available, set language preferences, and choose whether to retain the original audio, translated audio, or both. These controls help teams manage language demand more flexibly while keeping agents focused on the customer and the resolution.

Real-Time Voice Translation will be available in October to eligible customers using Zendesk Contact Center Native through a closed Early Access Program.

Watch this demo video to learn more about Real-Time Voice Translation.

For more information, visit the Zendesk Help Center.

About Zendesk

Exceptional service means never having to repeat yourself, whether you are a customer seeking help or an employee looking for answers. Zendesk orchestrates every service experience—wherever work happens—by powering an autonomous service workforce of AI agents, automation, and human expertise so every moment feels continuous, personal, and focused on real resolution. The Zendesk Resolution Platform unifies your workforce into a single system that improves with every interaction. Our discipline is simple: AI is the means, outcomes are the identity and enduring relationships are the result.

Media gallery

About The Author
Business Wire