Answering calls in French in Quebec: what contractors should know

The baseline expectation

Quebec's Charter of the French Language establishes French as the language of commerce and business in the province, and consumers have a right to be served in French. Reforms passed in 2022 under Bill 96 strengthened this considerably and phased in additional requirements over the following years.

For a home service business, the practical translation is straightforward: a customer who calls you in French should be able to conduct their entire interaction in French — the greeting, the intake, the booking, the follow-up.

This isn't a new idea in Quebec, and most established contractors already operate this way. What changed is that the expectation has more teeth behind it, and the complaint mechanism is more accessible than it used to be.

Why the after-hours line is the weak point

Here's the gap we see constantly. A company handles French perfectly during business hours — the office staff are bilingual, the daytime experience is seamless. Then at 6 PM the phone forwards to an English voicemail greeting, or to an answering service whose overnight shift happens to have no French speaker on it.

The result is a French-speaking customer in an emergency who cannot get service in French, from a company that would tell you it serves customers in French.

That's a compliance exposure, but forget compliance for a second — it's a business problem. In most of Quebec, a French-speaking homeowner who reaches an English-only line at 2 AM hangs up and calls someone else. You don't get a complaint. You get silence, and the job goes elsewhere.

What "serving in French" actually requires on a phone line

Working through it practically:

• The greeting. The call should open in French, or in a way that lets the caller continue in French immediately. "Bonjour, Night Live" is fine. An English-only greeting that forces the caller to ask for French is the thing to avoid.
• The full interaction. Not just the greeting. If the intake questions switch to English after a French hello, you haven't solved anything.
• Written follow-up. Confirmation texts and emails to a French-speaking customer should be in French.
• No penalty for choosing French. A French caller shouldn't wait longer, get transferred more, or receive a thinner service than an English caller. If French means "hold while we find someone," that's the problem in a different shape.

The three ways contractors handle this

Bilingual staff

The gold standard during business hours, and unaffordable overnight. Covering nights, weekends, and holidays with guaranteed French capability means multiple bilingual employees on rotation. For a company of five, this isn't happening.

A bilingual answering service

Better, but read the fine print. Many services advertise "bilingual" and deliver it as routing — the call arrives, an English agent answers, and a French speaker is found. At 2 PM on a Tuesday that works. At 3 AM on December 26th, the French speaker may not be on shift, and the caller gets a hold, an apology, or an English conversation.

Ask the specific question: is a French speaker guaranteed on every shift, including overnight and statutory holidays? Get it in writing. "Bilingual" without that guarantee often means "bilingual during business hours."

AI that handles both

This is the case we'd make for our own product, so weigh it accordingly. An AI system doesn't have shifts. It answers in the caller's language on the first ring, at 3 AM on a holiday exactly as at 2 PM on a Tuesday, with no transfer and no hold. The French experience and the English experience are the same experience.

The honest caveat from our comparison piece applies here too: a genuinely distressed caller is still better served by a skilled human. But a skilled human who speaks French and is awake at 3 AM on Boxing Day is not a thing most home service businesses can actually buy.

A quick self-audit

Ten minutes, and you'll know where you stand. Call your own business line from a phone the office won't recognise:

1. At 2 PM on a weekday. Open in French. Does the whole call work?
2. At 9 PM on a weekday. Same test. Where does it land?
3. At 10 AM on a Sunday. Same test.
4. Check your voicemail greeting. Is it bilingual? When did you last listen to it?
5. Check your automated texts. If your booking system sends confirmations, are they French for French customers?

Most contractors pass the first test comfortably and fail at least one of the others. That failure is where the calls are leaking.

The bottom line

The regulatory picture is worth understanding, but it isn't the strongest argument for fixing this. The strongest argument is that in Quebec, roughly eight in ten people speak French at home. An after-hours line that doesn't work in French isn't a partial service — for the majority of your potential market, at the hours when jobs are most urgent and most valuable, it's no service at all.