Multilingual customer chat for businesses in Batumi
Multilingual by default, because the city is.
~1 min · 94 words
The city is. A customer at a restaurant writes in Russian; their friend writes the same restaurant in Georgian; the booking confirmation goes out in English because that's the lingua franca.
Most software made elsewhere assumes English-first with a Spanish toggle and breaks here. We built aitvini so the chat replies in whichever language the customer wrote in, on the first message, without configuration, without the owner switching modes, without “we also speak…” disclaimers on the placard.
Why does multilingual-by-default matter for Batumi specifically?
Batumi runs on a kind of casual multilingualism that's hard to describe to people who haven't lived in a city like it. A restaurant on Chavchavadze Avenue might serve a Georgian family of regulars in Georgian, a Russian-speaking couple from Tbilisi in Russian, a Turkish tour group in Turkish, and a Polish honeymoon party in English — all in the same dinner service. The waiter switches in real time without performing the switch.
Software made for the average American small business does not anticipate this. A “language toggle” assumes the customer chooses upfront. A “we also speak…” notice on the menu assumes the customer signals their language to the staff before ordering. A “Press 1 for English” phone tree assumes the customer is willing to navigate one. None of these match how Batumi actually works.
A customer chat that mimics the way the city actually operates has to detect the language from the customer's first message and reply in it. No toggle. No notice. No tree. The customer writes in Russian, the chat replies in Russian; the customer writes in Turkish, the chat replies in Turkish. The default behavior is the same one the waiter performs without thinking about it.
How does the chat handle a customer who switches mid-conversation?
Customers in Batumi switch mid-conversation more than people expect. A guest at a hotel asks a question in Russian, then thanks the chat in English. A diner asks about the wine list in Georgian, then asks for the bill in Turkish because she's writing on behalf of her father.
The chat reads each message independently and replies in whichever language that message was written in. There's no sticky “this conversation is in Russian now” state — there's just per-message language detection on every reply.
This sounds simple and was the result of multiple iterations. An earlier version kept conversation language sticky, which felt natural in English-only test conversations and immediately broke in real Batumi conversations the moment a customer code-switched. The rebuild was small; the design lesson — build for the way the city actually behaves, not the way the testing language behaves — was bigger.
Do the chat's internal rules translate well across languages?
This was the harder question. The chat has rules in the system prompt that govern reply length, tone, and behavior. “Reply in 1–3 sentences” is one of them. Early versions had a different rule — “reply in under fifty words” — and it behaved differently in different languages.
A fifty-word reply in English is about three sentences. The same fifty words in Russian is about three sentences. The same fifty words in Georgian is about two sentences because Georgian inflectional endings are long. The same fifty words in Turkish is also about two sentences for related reasons. The rule that was “calm and conversational” in English became “abrupt and clipped” in Georgian.
We replaced the word count with a sentence count, and the chat felt the same in every language we tested. Sentence boundaries work the same in every language we support. The model counts them the same way regardless of script. The constraint behaves identically. The owner stops noticing.
The deeper rule we now follow: write rules in units that survive translation. Sentences, not words. Items, not pages. Days, not hours.
What if my business is in Batumi but not in tourism?
Multilingual-by-default isn't only relevant to tourism. The dental clinic on Chavchavadze sees Georgian regulars, Russian-speaking residents from the Black Sea coast, and the occasional Turkish visitor in transit. The dermatology studio sees the same mix plus expats from a wider pool. The physiotherapy clinic sees professional athletes from the Black Sea swimming circuit and old Georgian women from down the street.
A business doesn't have to be a hotel for its customers to be multilingual. Batumi-resident businesses serve Batumi-resident customers, and those customers don't have a single shared language.
Even outside tourism-facing service businesses, multilingual capability matters quietly. The bilingual customer who wrote to the receptionist in Russian got a reply in English because that's what the receptionist wrote. They were polite about it and never complained. They also didn't come back. The chat doesn't make that mistake — see the aitvini overview for the full picture of how the chat fits the boutique businesses we work with.
What languages does the chat speak out of the box?
English, Russian, Georgian, and Turkish. The underlying model speaks many more — we test on these four and let owners turn on others by request.
How accurate is the chat's Georgian?
Good and improving. Georgian declension and casual Black-Sea-Georgian phrasing are a specific focus — we test against real customer conversations from our pilot clinics, not synthetic translation pairs.
Does the chat handle scripts other than Latin and Cyrillic?
Yes. Georgian script and Turkish letters render correctly in the chat UI and in the morning brief. So does Arabic if you set it up.
Can the customer force the chat into a specific language?
Yes — the chat respects the language they're writing in. If they want Russian replies, they write in Russian. If they switch mid-conversation, the chat switches with them.
What about businesses outside Batumi?
Multilingual-by-default works anywhere there's no single shared customer language. We've onboarded a hotel in Ureki and started conversations with operators in Tbilisi and Istanbul.