Base variables are not translating when used in predefined templates

Frozenrope

I'm stumped. I can't figure out why my base variables are not translating correctly when used in my predefined templates. User are receiving emails that still look like:

Hello %name,

Thank you for contacting our support department. My name is %assignee and... (yaada, yada, yada).

How can I troubleshoot what is going wrong? I don't doublt that it's "pilot error" but I don't knwo where to start troubleshooting.

Thanks all. Much appreciated.