Short course for customer service- any ideas?

[bobs12]

Hi everyone,

I've been asked at work to organise and manage a short training program designed to combine customer service training with English tuition for new recruits. The programme will be run in a new school that is opening in the city.

The focus is on nurturing a more 'Western' style of service. I'm not sure how long the course will be yet, but I wondered if anyone had any ideas. The main issue is that I will be working with people who are not well known for giving a hoot about customers or about being polite to them. (service staff and managerials alike!)

The company is an IT outsourcing company, so most communication will be done by email and telephone. I'm also supposed to be teaching teamwork skills.

I have an outline plan to cover the following ideas:

Why customer care (introduction)- importance for employee and employer
Creating a rapport- making the customer feel valued
Relationship marketing- creating and maintaining a relationship
Dealing with problems- dispute resolution
Language use- politeness and assertiveness for dealing with problems- “I”
Language use- positive language for all situations
Creating an impression- ‘can do’ attitude


Communication- telephone [language use, key phrases, situations, listening problems]
writing [official style, conventions, register, email etiquette]
listening- further exercises, accents, natural (connected) speech

Team spirit- working together as a team



Any other areas to cover would be well received. I may delete some of the above.

If anyone has ideas/lessons/activities that worked well in any of these areas I'd love to hear from you. I'd like to include lots of listening exercises- the whole thing is intended to be mainly communicative, and possibly some video clips (I'll set all these up myself)

What I'm looking for also is listening problems that may be encountered with different accents and pronounciations- if you know any words or phrases that learners in your country often pronounce in a way that can cause confusion, this is the kind of thing I want to know.

The whole thing will be professionally done, there is a team of graphic designers here who will help with the layout, etc. I may also set up a website with some activities from the course (including listening activities.)

If you've managed to read this far, I hope you will help with some ideas

My email is [email protected]

I'll be very glad to share and discuss ideas with anyone who contributes. If anyone is interested in helping by giving the time to discuss the whole shebang as I go along (I'll send bits of what I come up with at various stages) I'll happily share the whole thing when it's complete. (audio files will be available on my website)

It should make a very useful residential or on-site course.

Please feel free to post here or email me,

Thanks,

Rob

[Indigo]

Hi Rob,

Let me think about this one. It's way over my head but I'm willing to jump.

[bobs12]

Hi Indingo!

Don't short-sell yourself The hard stuff will be done here- I assure you nothing is over anyone's head- if it is then it's over mine too!! The fact is that this is a course for people who are likely to have far-less-than-perfect English, so they'll find it hard enough to concentrate on that, never mind the actual content

I'll post more detail soon- I'll describe the kinds of situations that I need exercises/activities for and ask people to make suggestions. I've almost finished the teacher's notes, the next stage will be creating the students' materials- that's where I'll need most help with exercises and activities.

In fact, a huge help at this stage would be just having someone to cast a critical eye over the teacher's notes. Also will be good to have criticism of the student material when it's ready.

I'm supposed to be doing this in collaboration with a guy who's setting up a new school in the city. Unfortunately every time I try to organise a meeting with him he says he's busy with something. I think he's just bluffing somehow.

The main reason I put this post up was that I was getting kinda lonely doing all this on my own, so any help will be great!

Rob[/i][/b]

[bobs12]

Sorry, Indigo, really didn't mean to write Indingo!

[strider]

Hi bobs12

It looks like you have a great plan !

Just one comment - don't forget the 'basics'. I would guess that your students will have to give e-mail and Internet addresses over the phone, are they OK with the alphabet? Do they know how to say @ ? Do they know some communication strategies (reformulating, asking the caller to repeat)? Can they say numbers over the phone? Can they understand numbers when they hear them?

It could be a good idea to have a few minutes of oral comprehension work in each module, just to be sure that they get these points.

I hope your course goes well, let us know what happens!

[bobs12]

Thanks strider!

I'd forgotten that! My telephone course is more or less written up already but you're right- I had completely overlooked the spelling/reading numbers basics, top idea!

In Russia '@' is called sobaka which means 'dog'. '.' often gets called 'point' instead of dot. Also they have trouble with 'www'- it comes out veh-veh-veh, so I'll include URL's too.

This is exactly the kind of suggestion I'm looking for If you're interested I'll be glad to send the notes for the telephone part (they're almost written up, I'll add in the above points) just send me an email. At the moment it's only a set of teacher's notes, I still have to add the activities and exercises. I'd love to have someone else look at things before I use them. This thing has to be really professional, and there is nobody here to work with on it!

Listening will come in at every possible stage- I want them listening to different accents, filling blanks in transcripts, deciding who's angry, etc. etc.

I'll soon have a list of specific situations that I need exercises for- I'll put them up here shortly

Glad people are interested!

[SarahJoy]

Hi Bobs12--

Don't know if you are still using this forum, since this was posted around a year ago, but I am now developing an accent training/customer service curriculum in India and am needing some help. If you have finished already, I'd love to see what you did. If you still need some help, I can try and help.

[SarahJoy]

Hi Bobs12--

Don't know if you are still using this forum, since this was posted around a year ago, but I am now developing an accent training/customer service curriculum in India and am needing some help. If you have finished already, I'd love to see what you did. If you still need some help, I can try and help.