Account language
Declared once, at onboarding, for each client account — English or French. It is the language the client reads, and it does not change because a request lands on a bilingual staffer’s desk.
Delivery reality Réalité de livraison
Language follows the account, not the calendar.
Bilingual does not mean simultaneous, and it does not mean every request in every language at every hour. It means language is a declared, tracked property of the account — never an assumption anyone has to guess.
Three places language can diverge
Practice language
Whatever your own team already works in. Your internal brief, escalation notes, and commercial conversation can stay in your practice’s working language even when the account is declared in the other one.
Delivery-note language
Follows the account, not the practice. The note that comes back is written to be reused with the client directly, in the language the client actually reads.
One request, followed end to end
Declared at onboarding
The account’s working language is recorded once, alongside the offer and the owner — never re-decided per request.
The client writes in the account language
A request arrives the way the client actually writes, in the language already on file.
Delivery works in the useful language
The person handling the request works in whichever language moves the task forward correctly — often the practice’s own — while the account record keeps its declared language.
The return note is written in the account language
Whatever language the work happened in internally, the note that comes back is authored for the client who has to read it.
Your practice reuses it directly
A resolution note built this way can go to the client largely as written, in your tone, with no translation pass added at the last minute.
Where this gets tested
A Québec client expects French-language correspondence.
The account is declared French at onboarding; every client-facing note follows that declaration regardless of which language your own team used internally.
An escalation needs your practice’s fastest reader.
Internal escalation can run in your team’s working language even on a French-declared account — only the client-facing note has to match the account.
A note has to be reused verbatim.
That is the design goal, not an edge case: a return note in the account’s declared language should need no rewrite before it reaches the client.
A client writes in a language that is not the declared one.
It happens. The declared account language stays the default for outgoing notes; anything genuinely mixed gets confirmed with your practice rather than guessed.
What “bilingual” does not mean here
- Simultaneous service in both languages, on every channel, at every hour.
- Machine-translated notes presented as native writing.
- A language switch mid-file without your practice confirming it.
- Coverage of a third language beyond English and French.