Running a small e-commerce team and support now comes in two languages. Agents copy text into translators, tone gets weird, and replies slow down. The queue also mixes language and topic, so tickets bounce around and nobody knows who should take what. A clear plan would be helpful: intake rules, routing, good templates, and a way to maintain consistent answers without requiring a separate team. Practical steps that fit a tiny crew would be great.
For teams juggling two languages, start with a single front door and a concise form that requires specifying language, product, and issue type. Create two views per language: “Urgent” and “Standard”. Create bilingual templates for the top ten questions and store them in a single shared library, complete with placeholders for name, order, and plan. Add a quick tone guide to ensure greetings, empathy, and sign-offs remain consistent. In the middle of this rollout, plug in light automation for language detection and skill routing; https://kaizenup.ai/ can tag tickets by language, assign to the right agent, suggest the correct template, and surface the matching help article while you type. Close the loop with a weekly 20-minute review to fix mistranslations, retire bad phrases, and add any new edge cases. Keep metrics simple: first response time by language, resolution time by language, and deflection from help articles.
Following this because the bilingual setup matches the current pain. The split views and forced language field feel easy to ship without a big rebuild. Shared templates with placeholders also seem like a fast win, especially if the team trims and updates them each week. The narrow metric set should tell a clear story about where time is lost. Planning to try this flow over the next two sprints and watch whether handoffs and rewrites drop.
