Law 96 and your phone system: greeting and menu

Quebec's Law 96 obliges businesses to serve customers in French, and telephone service is explicitly part of that. In practice: the greeting is in French, the message offering another language should be brief rather than a second full menu, and guidance extends as far as hold music being francophone.

This is the rare compliance topic that lands directly on configuration screens. It is not a policy to file: it is a call flow to build.

Three things: the call is answered in French, the offer of another language stays brief, and the obligation reaches past the greeting into the announcements and the hold music. Law 96 amended the Charter of the French Language and took effect in stages from June 2022, creating an explicit obligation to offer goods and services in French to consumers, with customer service named: telephone, chat, email, and the documents you hand over.

The default is French

Not "French available on request", not "press 2 for French". The call is answered in French, and another language is offered from there.

The other-language offer should be brief

Public guidance is that a message indicating service in another language should not run long: a few seconds, naming who can be served in it. A full second menu in English, of equal length and prominence, inverts the default the statute is establishing.

It reaches further than the greeting

Guidance extends to hold music being Québécois and francophone, with lyrics rather than instrumental. Whether or not that is enforced against a small business, it tells you how broadly "service in French" is being read.

Businesses with 25 or more employees have additional obligations, including registration with the Office québécois de la langue française and a francization program. And the law can reach a business based in another province if it has Quebec clients or offers services accessible from Quebec.

The structural mistake is treating French as a branch. If your flow opens with "For English press 1, pour le français faites 2", French is not the default: it is one of two options, and the caller has already heard English first.

The shape the statute points at is:

1. Greeting in French. Full, normal, complete.
2. A brief line offering English, if you can serve in English.
3. The main menu in French, for callers who do nothing.
4. An English tree behind the option, for those who take it.

The difference between this and a bilingual menu is where the default sits. Doing nothing should land a caller in French service.

If you record, the announcement is a Law 25 obligation, one of several that reach a phone line, and it stacks on top of this one, and it has to be in French too, for the same reason the greeting does. Consent under Law 25 covers what the announcement must actually say.

Ringfully's flow builder lets you construct exactly the shape above: a French greeting, a short English option, separate trees behind each, and we build the first version with you rather than leaving you a blank screen. Call menus and hours is the plain description of it. Business hours, holidays and closures are per-location, so a Quebec office can behave differently from one elsewhere.

One honest limit. We do not supply hold music, francophone or otherwise: you provide the audio.

The recording announcement used to be the second limit here, and it is not any more. A stored announcement is spoken on the call, so it can carry the Law 25 half, and it has to be written in French for the same reason the greeting is. Two things are worth knowing about when it lands. In always mode the caller hears it before being connected. In the agent's-choice mode nothing is said at the start, because nobody yet knows there will be a recording, and it plays just after an agent starts recording rather than before. And an empty field is silence: nothing is said, and the recording still runs, so French wording only helps once somebody has actually typed it in.

A description of what the statute asks, not legal advice, and Charter obligations vary with headcount and sector. Confirm with a Quebec-qualified adviser. Two pieces of this have their own articles: how long the English option may run, and whether any of it reaches you from outside Quebec. For the mechanics of how a flow executes, see how it works.