Essay for Business English
The class I teach are a group of 8 multilingual students studying an 8 week Business English
programme in customer care/ call centre protocol in order to obtain employment in call centres,
customer care centres and client service positions. They will all be finishing at the same time as the
course has a definitive start and end date.
I have chosen an interesting range of activities for my class. They are upper intermediate so they are
at a level where they can account for and sustain their opinions and even manage difficult situations
and can appropriately express agreement or disagreement. This is very pertinent to these students
in the context of the type of employment they will be looking for.
My warmer / ice-breaker and presentation of around 15 minutes will re-engage students with the
previous lesson’s vocabulary which was centred around general telephone conversations. It will get
them thinking in the context of a call centre / client care centre from the very outset of the lesson.
This vocabulary introduction will also help to offset any difficulties which may arise later in the
lesson when we start using stronger language in the scenario of a face-to-face customer care centre
which is the setting for the speaking activity. Some students may not feel as if they have the
requisite vocabulary to take on the role of an angry customer or one who needs help with a product
or even the customer service agent that must deal with them, so this should help them remember
the pertinent phrases and get their confidence back. I will introduce the use of stronger language
and vocabulary such as would be both experienced and required in a ‘real-life’ environment I am
also going to introduce a couple of fun, trick questions to get the students to engage with the
principal of listening, which is absolutely crucial in a call centre / customer care environment.
Effective listening is key to maintaining and improving a company’s interaction not only internally
with all employees, but especially with customers and other businesses such as suppliers. The call
centre exercise whereby the students will simulate a customer care walk in scenario is important in
that it will also teach students to listen and engage with the customer more fully by learning to give
the customer their complete attention and maintain eye contact. They will have to concentrate on
what the “customer” is saying, comprehend it and ask relevant questions to better understand what
they have heard so they can respond accordingly. We often only hear what we expect to hear so we
tend to make assumptions and we do not always catch the most important part of the question and
then end up getting side-tracked with irrelevant information.
This is a lesson that demonstrates that when communicating with customers, the students need to
listen carefully and check their understanding. They should also avoid assumptions at all costs, even
if they may have heard the problem before, because a different solution may be required for this
particular customer.
The practice and production side of my lesson will be a fairly complex speaking activity which will
take up the majority of the lesson as I am going to make each student take on the role of both
customer service agent and the actual customer, so there will be a good deal of speaking practise. It
can be difficult for a call centre / customer service agent to empathise with the customer if they
have never personally experienced the issue before, and it is especially important for customer
service agents to experience situations from a customer’s perspective. So, having the opportunity to
role play and practise how to handle specific situations is a great way to demonstrate what working
in a contact centre is actually like. The scene is a walk-in (face-to-face) customer care centre where
customers can go for assistance or to complain. I have chosen a face-to-face scenario as it is more
challenging when the customer is sitting right in front of you as opposed to them being just a voice
on the other end of the phone. Students will pair up and take it in turns to be both the customer
and the service centre agent. There will be a couple of different scenarios such as where a customer
needs help with a product, and then one where the customer is complaining / angry and then one
where the customer would like to return the product and requests a refund. The students will also
swop partners so they are dealing with several different personalities and approaches to the
exercise. At this level, my students need to be challenged on the use of both closed and open
questions when dealing with customers. Whilst open questions certainly help in gaining as much
information about the customer as possible, so they can then find the solution that works best for
them, there is also a lot of value in closed questions so the call centre agent can confirm the
information that they hear and then lead the conversation if the customer isn’t the most talkative.
Finally, I will introduce a grammar exercise by getting the students to write a follow-up email to one
of the customers asking them if they are happy with the service they received and whether their
problem has been resolved, or if there is anything else that they require assistance with. Effective
writing skills are also of huge importance as incorrect use of words and phrases can lead to
confusion and may present the situation in a completely different light and subsequently lead to
difficulties with the customer later, which may even involve a financial loss to the company, not to
mention reputational damage.
My cooler activity will involve a fun, customer service excellence awards ceremony with students
voting on who they thought handled the relevant situations the best and who actually resolved the
customer’s problem/s.