Bilingual AI Agency · Direct Access to the Engineer · Custom-Built

Your AI Operations Partner

Customer messages pile up across WeChat, text, email, voicemail, and Google — and the slow replies cost you the sale. 通道 Tongdao builds custom AI systems that connect the tools you already pay for, so every inquiry gets answered in 60 seconds — in English, in 中文, or both. Bilingual is our specialty; a calmer front desk that wins customers back is the point. You work directly with the engineer who builds it — never a sales rep.

Start with a diagnostic, not a quote.

Book a Free AI Health Check →

Prefer a scheduled call? Pick a time — no WeChat needed.

Scan to chat on WeChat

Fastest reply — usually within a few hours

What you're actually getting

Bilingual when you need it

Every agent handles English and 中文 natively — including customers who switch mid-sentence. Serve a bilingual community without your staff translating, or run English-only. Your call.

Orchestration, not another tool

You already pay for WeChat, Google, Square, a booking system, a CRM, reminders. I connect them so they actually work as one. No new platform to learn.

You work with the engineer directly

You talk to the engineer who built your system — not a sales rep, not a support queue, not a junior hand-off. Faster fixes, fewer people between you and the work.

Practitioner-grade engineering

15+ years building enterprise systems. Your agents won't break on edge cases — and when they do, I fix them. Remote-first, nationwide.

Why this exists

通道 means the pathway

My mother ran her own practice as a Chinese immigrant — skilled, relentless, and almost entirely on her own. The tools she could find were too expensive, too English-only, or too complicated to run while she was serving people. She solved every problem the hard way, alone. She passed in 2021.

通道 (tōngdào) means the pathway — the bridge I wish she'd had. I build the bilingual AI systems she never got: practical, affordable, and tuned to how real small businesses actually run. The goal is bigger than software — an open community where immigrant owners and local business owners alike stop solving the same problems alone. I treat every client like family, because to me this is personal.

— the founder & engineer behind 通道 Tongdao

Is this a fit?

Good fit

A local business — clinic, restaurant, salon, real estate, insurance, accounting, tutoring — with 50+ customers, patients, or leads a month
Messages are scattered across WeChat, text, email, voicemail, and Google, and some slip through the cracks
You serve English-speaking customers, Chinese-speaking customers, or both — bilingual when you need it, English-only when you don't
You've tried agencies or freelancers and felt like just another invoice
You want a system that compounds, and to talk directly to the engineer who builds it

Not a fit

You're shopping for an off-the-shelf chatbot to install and forget — this is a custom build with ongoing tuning
You need an ad-buying marketing agency — that's a separate discipline
You want the cheapest possible one-time fix — the value here is a system that's maintained as your tools change
You're not ready to map your current workflow honestly — the audit needs your input

A real agency — not a freelancer, not another SaaS

An agency, not a one-off freelancer

Freelancers ship and ghost. I build your system end to end and stay on to keep it running as your tools change. It's your operational backbone — not a weekend project.

You work with the engineer, not an account manager

Most agencies hand you to a salesperson, then a junior. With 通道 Tongdao you work directly with the engineer who designs, builds, and maintains your system. Faster fixes, nothing lost in the hand-off.

Custom-built, not off-the-shelf SaaS

SaaS sells you a tool and walks away. I connect the tools you already pay for into one system tuned to how your business runs — and keep it working when WeChat or Square changes something.

What it actually looks like

A mock 90-day rollout — Katy nail salon

This is a scenario, not a case study. No real client is being described. The shape, timeline, and outputs reflect what a typical 90-day engagement with a Chinese-American small business would look like once we work together.

Phase 1

Day 1–15

Listen + map

Free AI Health Check (30 min) — owner walks me through current workflow
I sit with the front desk for 2 hours (in-person or via screenshare) watching how WeChat / Google reviews / appointment requests actually flow
Document where customer data lives across the 4–5 tools they currently use
Identify the 2 highest-leverage automation opportunities
Owner gets a written 1-page plan: what AI will do, what stays human, what it costs to run

Phase 2

Day 16–45

Build the first agent

Bilingual after-hours appointment-request agent — handles WeChat messages between 9 PM and 9 AM, in Mandarin and English
Connects to their existing booking system (Square / Mindbody / GlossGenius — whichever they use)
Sends owner a daily Slack/WeChat summary: bookings made, questions escalated, no-shows flagged
First 2 weeks live in shadow mode (owner reviews every agent reply before it sends)
Final 2 weeks running live with owner spot-checking

Phase 3

Day 46–90

Tune + add the second agent

Refine the after-hours agent based on real customer responses (typically 20–30 small tweaks)
Add a 24-hour appointment-confirmation agent (bilingual SMS) to reduce no-show rate
Owner reviews monthly performance: average response time, reschedule rate, customer-satisfaction signal from review monitoring
Document everything in a runbook the owner keeps even if we part ways

What this looks like on the other side

Owner stops answering WeChat at 11 PM. The after-hours agent handles ~80% of messages without escalation.
No-show rate typically drops 30–50% from the bilingual reminder agent alone.
Front-desk staff reclaims 6–10 hours/week previously spent on repetitive messaging.
Owner has a documented system that doesn't depend on one person's memory.

Scenario only. Specific numbers depend on the business's starting state, customer volume, and which tools are already in place. The Health Check call is where we figure out what your real 90 days would look like.

Book your own AI Health Check →

Common questions

How long until I see results?: Your first AI agent goes live within about 2 weeks of the Health Check. Measurable time-savings (response time, no-shows, missed leads) typically show within the first month, and the ongoing investment usually pays for itself within 60–90 days if your current bottleneck is response speed or multi-channel chaos.
What tools do I need before we start?: Whatever you already have works. WeChat 公众号 or personal WeChat, Google Business Profile, Square or your existing booking system, email, phone. If something is missing that the agent needs, the Health Check identifies it up front so we can scope the right add-on into the build — usually a small monthly tool cost we'll name before you commit.
Is this HIPAA compliant for medical practices?: Yes. For medical/dental practices, I use HIPAA-compliant infrastructure (BAA-signed providers, encrypted at rest and in transit). The bilingual front-end handles patient inquiries; clinical data stays in your existing EHR.
What if I want to leave the retainer?: You own everything. No platform lock-in. I document the system so any engineer can maintain it. The retainer is for ongoing tuning + when things break (WeChat updates, integrations change, etc.) — not for hostage-keeping.
Why bilingual specifically?: Bilingual is not a translation layer — it's a different workflow. Customers arrive in Mandarin and switch to English mid-sentence, WeChat is the primary channel, and cultural context (family decision-making, 储值卡 prepaid systems, indirect communication norms) shapes what a good reply even looks like. I build agents that code-switch fluently and respond appropriately to that context. That's an unfakeable moat for Chinese-American businesses.

Book a free 30-minute diagnostic

No pitch. We'll spend 30 minutes mapping your front-desk workflow and the 1–2 places an AI agent would actually save you time. If there's no fit, we'll tell you.

info@tongdao.ai

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