We have a small company here in Canada and some of our people work in Quebec (French Canada) and some in English Canada.
Unfortunately I have not found an easy way to set the system up to use English prompts for callers to English people (extensions) and French prompts for French people (extensions). As admin, it would be great to be able to set default prompts for extensions and then allow the user to change is desired (i.e. from English to French or the reverse).
Taking this idea one step further, it would be great if callers could change the language they hear messages in. This does create a complication, is this change only in the system prompts, if available, or is it in the person’s (extension’s) messages. There are likely to be many views on this but I have simplified it to thinking that a user would have the option to record their message and at the end put something like “… please leave a message at the sound of the beep, alternately for French please press 1”. Then the caller would hear the person’s message in French if the press 1 and the system prompts would be in French. If they did not press 1, then they could leave their message and all system prompts would be in English.
I tell you this last extra point would be fantastic as it gets tiring to have to listen to all messages in both languages when going through an IVR system or when calling someone.
One more approach, when the extension level IVR is implemented is to be able to default to a language when ever someone calls from a particular area code i.e. use French if a call comes from 514, 450 and 819 area codes but english for all other area codes. Yes mistakes will be made due to this assumption but previous suggestions in previous paragraphs would enable the system to react appropreately.
Thanks a lot.
Regards
Peter Bassel