B1 – Effective Customer Service

Description

A B1-level ESL lesson on effective customer service, ideal for learners aiming to improve workplace communication.

Students listen to a realistic service call, explore essential customer service phrases, and practice handling real-world scenarios through role-plays. Includes vocabulary work, listening for detail, and guided speaking tasks based on authentic dialogue.

Warmer: What Makes Good Customer Service?

Start by asking students to brainstorm what makes good customer service. What are the traits of a great customer service representative? Give them a list of adjectives and individually have them sort them into good or bad traits. Words like polite, patient, professional, friendly, and helpful are clear positives, while defensive and talkative could spark some debate! Once everyone is ready, have put students into pairs and have them compare their lists, while justifying their choices.

Listening: A Customer Service Call

Next, play an audio recording of a conversation between a customer and a service representative. I found this conversation on ThoughtCo. titled How to Speak to A customer Service Representative. Unfortunately, this scenario came without any audio. That’s when ElevenLabs came in handy. I’ve used this AI tool before in Cambridge PET – Speaking Part 3 (work). Even though it isn’t perfect, I think that its free version will do for shorter audios. I separated the Customer Service Representative from the Customer’s parts and generated two audios separately. Have a listen and decide for yourself whether you find this tool useful and somewhat realistic.

This short dialogue is about a billing issue – a situation that many students will find familiar! Before playing the audio, give students a prediction task: Why do people usually call customer service? Then, as they listen, have them answer multiple-choice questions about the call. To take it a step further, listen again and have students fill in missing information like account numbers, addresses, and billing details. This trains them to listen carefully for specific details – an essential skill when dealing with customer service.

Vocabulary: Key Phrases for Customer Service

Then focus on useful expressions. Students match key phrases to different stages of a customer service call, as seen below.

• Opening a call politely: Hello, Big City Electricity, how may I help you today?
• Showing empathy: I’m sorry to hear that.
• Investigating a problem: Let me check that for you.
• Asking for customer details: Can I have your account number, please?
• Reassuring the customer: We’ll do our best to fix this as quickly as possible.
• Closing the conversation: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

These are practical phrases that will help students feel more comfortable if they ever need to make or receive such a call in English. To provide them with a little bit more practise, provide them with another example dialogue, this time talking about a delayed delivery, and ask them to fill in the gaps with the phrases mentioned before.

Role-Play: Handling a Customer Service Issue

Now comes the fun part – students get to put everything into practice! Divide them into pairs and give them role-play scenarios where one student is the customer and the other is the representative. Some possible situations include:

• Incorrect billing: charged the wrong amount, charged twice, etc.
• Service problem: internet not working, power outage, etc.
• Product issue: broken item, missing parts, refund request, etc.

Students select one situation that the related to the most. Encourage them to use the key phrases they learned earlier. After each role-play, switch roles and try a different scenario!

Wrap-Up Discussion