Understanding Every Customer, In Every Language

Understanding Every Customer, In Every Language

Multilingual Call Transcription Across South Africa and Europe

Customer experience starts with listening and listening only works when customers are understood in the language they naturally speak.

Since launching free call transcription to all QContact customers in early 2023, one message came through louder than any other “When will this work in more languages?”

Today, we’re proud to share it does at scale, and with accuracy built for real-world conversations.

From English-Only to 3 Billion Voices Worldwide

Our initial transcription capability served English speakers around 1.5 billion people globally.

Over the past year, QContact has more than doubled that reach, expanding to over 30 languages across 100+ countries, now covering more than 3 billion speakers.

This now includes:

• All 24 official European Union languages and all 11 official languages of South Africa

Why South Africa Required a Different Approach

South Africa is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. While English is the language of business, it is not the primary language spoken at home for most South Africans.

That diversity introduces real technical challenges:

• Complex grammar structures

• Highly compounded words

• Context-driven meaning

• Frequent code switching between languages mid-sentence

Recognising this, QContact invested significant time and engineering effort to train and tune speech recognition models specifically for South African languages and accents, building on NVIDIA-powered speech technology.

Now Supporting All 11 Official South African Languages

QContact now delivers production-grade transcription across:

• English (South African–tuned)

• isiZulu

• isiXhosa

• Afrikaans

• Sepedi

• Setswana

• Sesotho

• Xitsonga

• siSwati

• Tshivenda

• isiNdebele

In addition, our English model has been further trained on South African accents, improving accuracy for local call centre environments.

Why Traditional Accuracy Metrics Fall Short

The Problem with Word Error Rate (WER)

Most transcription engines rely on Word Error Rate (WER) as the primary accuracy metric. While effective for English and other European languages, WER often misrepresents accuracy in African languages.

Single Letter Errors, Massive Penalties

Example (Xitsonga):

• Actual: ndziyavulavula

• Transcribed: ndziyavulavla

To a Tsonga speaker, the meaning (“I am speaking”) is perfectly clear. Yet WER scores this as 100% incorrect, despite only one missing letter.

Example (Sesotho):

• keabetswa ("I am being helped")

A single vowel change (keabetswe) again results in 100% WER failure, despite near-perfect comprehension.

Compounding Where African Languages Truly Challenge AI

English has compound words — checkout, check-out, check out — all meaning the same thing, yet scored differently by machines.

Afrikaans takes compounding to another level.

Example:

Customer service call centre scheduling problem

Afrikaans translation:

klantediensoproepsentrumskeduleringsprobleem

That’s a single, grammatically correct word.

One character error here results in 100% WER, even though a human would instantly understand the meaning.

Measuring What Actually Matters: Character Error Rate (CER)

Because of these linguistic realities, the industry measures African-language accuracy using Character Error Rate (CER) rather than WER.

QContact’s models are optimised and benchmarked accordingly, ensuring transcription quality reflects human comprehension, not just mathematical scoring.

Built for Real Conversations: Code Switching Support

South African conversations don’t stay neatly in one language. Customers naturally switch between:

• English and isiZulu

• Afrikaans and English

QContact’s South African and European speech models dynamically support language switching mid-call, without requiring predefined language selection.

The result:

• More accurate transcripts

• Better AI summaries

• Stronger conversation analytics

What This Means for CX Teams

You now ain:

• Accurate transcription across 30+ languages

• AI summaries that respect linguistic context

• Conversation analytics that surface real insight

• Full multilingual support at no additional cost

All designed to help teams understand what customers are actually saying, in the language they’re most comfortable using.

Global and Local Language Coverage at a Glance

• 100% of European Union official languages

• 100% of South Africa’s official languages

• Over 3 billion speakers globally

Ready to Hear What Your Customers Are Really Saying?

If you’re ready to unlock deeper insight, stronger CX, and more inclusive customer conversations — all without added transcription costs, schedule time with us by Booking a call.

Because great customer experience starts with listening!.