Bilingual Salon: Language Is Chosen per Client, Not per Salon
Your reminder opens with “Bonjour / Hi”, runs two sentences in French, then the same two in English. You wrote it that way so nobody would be left out. The result: every client gets a message where half the text was never meant for him.
A salon that serves both French and English speakers does not have to pick one language for its whole clientele. It has to pick one per client, once. Here’s what I’ve learned working with salons that serve a mixed clientele.
Why the two-language message speaks to no one
The bilingual message comes from a good place. It still has three flaws:
- It is twice as long. A text message holds 160 characters. Past that, it is split into several segments, each one billed, and the appointment time ends up buried in the middle.
- It tells the client you do not know who he is. A regular of five years who still gets his confirmation in two languages understands that the salon never took note.
- It always puts one language second. The client whose language comes last notices, on every single message.
The other habit, sending everything in the salon’s language, is simpler and no better. The English-speaking client of a French-speaking salon almost never complains. He skims, he replies less, and one day he misses a time change he did not quite understand.
How do you know which language to write to each client in?
The client has already told you, and nobody wrote it down. He picked a language when he booked online, or he greeted you in his own on the phone. All it takes is recording it once on his file, at the first visit.
When in doubt, the question takes five seconds at the front desk: “Would you like your reminders in French or in English?” Nobody takes offence. It is a service question, the same as asking whether he prefers a text or an email.
⚠️ The mistake to avoid: guessing the language from a last name or an accent. A Tremblay may have grown up in English, a Smith sometimes reads only French, and a client who gets by in French in the chair often prefers to read his messages in the other language. The only reliable source is the client himself.
What should follow the client’s language?
Everything that reaches him before he walks through the door: the booking page, the confirmation, the reminders, the review request after the visit. And the phone, which is often the weak link. A salon can have flawless texts in both languages and a single person at the desk able to take a call in English.
In Quebec, every client has the right to be served in French. Nothing prevents you from also serving in English the client who prefers it, and that is exactly what choosing per client allows: French stays the language of the salon, and English becomes a service offered to those who ask for it.
💡 What I see with our clients: salons that write to each client in his own language get noticeably more replies to their reminders from their minority-language clientele. The client who understands his message the first time confirms, moves or cancels in time, instead of letting it slide.
Do you know the real share of each language in your clientele?
Most owners I ask answer with an impression: “almost everyone is French-speaking.” When they look at the actual count, the share of the other language is often larger than they thought, because those clients are discreet and get by in French once they are seated.
That count drives concrete decisions: whether to translate your service names, who to put at the front desk on Saturdays, which language to post in on social media. A salon where a good share of the clientele reads English is not run like a salon where that is the exception.
Conclusion
A salon’s bilingualism is not measured by the number of languages in a message. It is measured by the number of clients who receive theirs in the right one. One language per file, recorded once, and everything else follows.
At Flowcut, every client file carries its language, French or English. The confirmation and reminders for an appointment go out in the client’s language, the one he used when booking online or the one on his file, and otherwise in the salon’s default language. And the Clientele’s preferred languages report shows the breakdown of your active clients, so you finally know what share of your clientele reads in each language.
