French-first IVR that still serves anglophones

A French-first phone menu answers in French, offers English in a single short line, and sends a caller who does nothing into French service. A bilingual menu presents both languages as equals. Under Quebec's Charter, the first structure is the one to build, and the difference is entirely in where the default sits.

Here is how to build it without making anglophone callers feel handled badly.

The bilingual menu costs your francophone callers time in order to save it for anglophone ones. French-first reverses that, and one extra keypress is a small price for the caller who takes the option.

Five steps, in this order: a French greeting, one short line offering English, the French menu, the English tree behind the digit, and a timeout that lands in French.

The greeting

Normal French, complete, naming the business. Nothing about language yet: a caller who reached the right place should hear that first.

The offer, once and short

Something on the order of "Pour le service en anglais, faites le 9." One line, which is the shape the Office québécois de la langue française sets out in its model greeting for a centralized telephone service: the message opens in French, gives a brief instruction for service in the other language, then returns to French. Placed after the greeting and before the menu, so the anglophone caller does not have to sit through a French menu to discover the option, and the francophone caller loses about two seconds.

The French menu

The real one, with the options your callers actually need.

The English tree

Behind the digit, a complete equivalent: same options, same routing, same queues.

The timeout

This is the part that decides whether you are actually French-first. A caller who presses nothing should land in French service. Repeating the greeting once and then routing to a French queue is the behaviour; sending them to a bilingual "please choose" loop is not.

Putting the English offer first. The commonest one, usually inherited from a system configured before the obligation existed. The first thing heard is the default, whatever the menu says afterwards.

Making English the shorter path. If English reaches a human in two steps and French takes four, the structure says something the greeting does not.

Forgetting the branches. Voicemail greetings, hold messages, after-hours announcements and callback prompts are all part of "telephone service", and the Office keeps writing guidance on telephone communications covering each of them in turn. A French-first main menu that hands off to an English voicemail greeting has moved the problem rather than solved it.

Leaving the queue announcements in one language. Position-in-queue and estimated-wait messages sit inside the wait, which is exactly where a caller is most likely to give up.

Flows are built as a graph, so the structure above is the ordinary way to build rather than a workaround: a greeting block, a menu with one digit routed to a separate English subtree, and a timeout exit you set explicitly. Sub-flows mean the English tree can be maintained as its own thing instead of duplicated inside the French one. The blocks this uses are described on call menus and hours.

Business hours, holidays and closures attach per location, so a Quebec number can follow the Quebec calendar while another follows its own. Quebec statutory holidays covers that side.

The honest limit: we do not supply audio. Greetings, hold music and announcements are yours to record or generate, in whichever language. If you would rather have this shape built with you the first time, tell us how your line answers today.

A description of what the Charter of the French language asks, not legal advice. Confirm your obligations with a Quebec-qualified adviser. Related: Law 96 and your phone system.