Finnair | Carita Koivunen tried to handle a simple matter in a “Finnish” chat based on automatic translation – “This was not a good service”

Language barrier makes customer service difficult.

This is what the Espoo native had to say Carita Koivunenwhose attempt to communicate in Finnair’s chat service in the summer left him upset.

Koivunen, who was planning a holiday in Greece, wanted to transfer the meal he had chosen from the return flight to the outbound flight. To find out, he needed Finnair’s chatbot.

The airline’s bot offered Finnish and English as language choices. Koivunen knows English, but chose the Finnish language option because of principle.

“I think a state-owned company like Finnair should provide service in Finnish,” Koivunen tells HS.

The bot, which was looking for solutions in its time, finally connected Koivunen with a human employee. This said that he was using a translation program and asked the customer to communicate as clearly as possible.

When Koivunen was able to explain his case, the customer service representative had to come to the conclusion that he did not have the authority to handle it. Instead, he said he would connect with “one of his universities”.

“I was wondering which university. But of course it was a translation error, where the program had mixed up the words ‘colleague’ and ‘college'”, says Koivunen.

Also another customer service representative who came to the chat said that he was using a translation program, and also demanded clear messages. Koivunen repeated his question just to be sure.

In the end, this customer service agent got Koivuse’s request taken care of, but Koivuse found the whole process frustrating.

“I don’t think this was a good service. A simple matter took a long time, and communication did not work properly due to translation problems,” he says.

The vacation itself went as it should. Koivunen tells HS that he often flies with Finnair.

Finnair transferred in January of this year, its customer service chat in Finnish to Bulgaria. Today, customer service is mostly handled by non-Finnish-speaking employees in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.

Employees use a translation program to communicate with Finnish-speaking customers. Unsuccessful machine translations can lead to difficulties in resolving customer requests.

Carita Koivunen says that before the change Finnair’s chat functioned well. However, after the reform, getting the service in Finnish has been bumpy.

“Employees should have language skills, that’s the least you can expect,” he says.

Koivunen says that he has noticed similar problems in other customer service chats.

“Translation programs are good work tools, but communication should not be left to them. We often come across completely stupid translations,” says Koivunen.

Finnair said in the spring that the chat service was moved to Bulgaria, as Finnair had already centralized its customer service chats in other languages ​​there in 2017.

Finnair’s communications was reported in Aprilthat they follow the customer feedback they receive from the new chat with interest and attention.

“There have been translation errors in individual cases. As a rule, customer satisfaction has been at a good level,” said Finnair’s director of customer experience development at the time Tiina Tissari.