Language is usually treated as an edge case in customer service — a transfer, a separate line, a “press 2.” The Voksha corpus suggests it’s closer to a third of the front door. And when callers tell us what they value most about the experience, language is the thing they name.
01 · The gap, in our data
67% English, and even that isn’t one language.
Across 1,000,000+ calls, 67% are in English — but that bucket spans American, British, Australian, and many other accents that rigid speech systems routinely stumble on. The remaining 33% arrive in other languages, led by Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Japanese, and French. A single Voksha line detects and answers in the caller’s language from the first second, with no phone tree and no transfer.
- English (American, British, Australian + more)
- 67%
- Other languages
- 33%
Led by Spanish · Chinese · Korean · Hindi · Japanese · French
Voksha data · detected call language · 1,000,000+ calls
02 · Why it moves revenue
People buy in the language they think in.
The most-cited research on this comes from CSA Research’s “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy” study — a survey of 8,709 consumers across 29 countries. Its headline findings: 76% prefer to buy products with information in their own language, and 40% say they will never buy from sites in another language. Among consumers with no command of English, that preference climbs to 89%.
One caveat we’ll name so you can use the stat cleanly: the CSA study measured online-shopping and website preference, not phone calls. It speaks to the strength of language preference in buying decisions generally — the Voksha figures above are what that preference looks like on the phone, specifically.
Set the two together and the strategic read is direct: a third of inbound calls already speak another language, and the research says a large share of those callers will walk if they can’t transact in it. The default single-language front desk isn’t neutral — it’s a filter that removes paying customers.
03 · What callers tell us
The thing they remember is being understood.
Post-call sentiment across the corpus skews strongly positive, and the drivers are consistent: callers value that someone is there at any hour, that their question gets resolved quickly — and, most pointedly, that they’re understood in their own language and accent. That last one comes up again and again. It’s not only comprehension; it’s the signal that a business took them seriously enough to meet them where they are.
This report pairs with Voksha’s enterprise multilingual launch, which extends automatic, on-brand answering across 200+ languages for organizations with high-volume, multi-location call operations.
Voksha data · post-call sentiment themes
Cite this report
The Language Gap Report
Voksha (2026). The Language Gap Report. voksha.com/research/language-gap-report
On Voksha’s AI receptionist platform, 33% of calls come in a language other than English — led by Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Japanese and French (Voksha, 2026). Separately, CSA Research found 76% of consumers prefer to buy in their own language and 40% won’t buy in another (CSA Research, 2020).
Sourcing
Voksha data (67% English / 33% other languages; sentiment themes): anonymized, aggregated platform records, 1,000,000+ calls, based on automatic language detection.
76% / 40% / 89% language-preference figures: CSA Research, “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy — B2C” (2020), a survey of 8,709 consumers across 29 countries conducted with Kantar. These figures describe online-shopping preference, not phone interactions.
200+ languages: Voksha enterprise platform capability.
