English Language Idioms Call Center Agents Need To Know

Call center agents are tasked with taking care of customer concerns, doing their best to make sure every transaction results in a positive customer experience. For offshore call centers, the expectation obviously is that call center agents can speak English relatively well. For offshore call center hubs like Manila and Mumbai where English is practically the second language, speaking English well shouldn’t be a problem. However, despite this fact, a lot of customers still insist on speaking with someone else or being transferred to a locally-based representative mainly due to one reason: Customers prefer speaking with a native speaking rep. This article will help you converse with your customer like a native speaking call center agent through the appropriate use of English language idioms.

You Don’t Sound Native

Whenever a customer tells you that you don’t sound like a native English speaker, the customer doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t speak English well but rather you’re not familiar with English language idioms and expressions most native English speakers are quite used to. Although having an accent definitely helps, being a native English speaker requires more than just imitating English slang and accent. Customers aren’t dumb and they can certainly see through the farce of using a fake accent. This tends to be irritating and puts a call center agent’s credibility and honesty into question. It is better to speak English in your natural tone and just spice up the conversation with English language idioms your customer is familiar with. Most American customers are already aware about offshoring and outsourcing and that they are actually talking with a call center agent located halfway across the globe. Usually, they won’t mind talking with a call center agent from Manila or Mumbai as long as the call center agent and the customer can effectively communicate on the same wavelength. It is only when the call center agent fails to speak on the same level as the customer that not sounding native becomes an issue. Do not expect the customer to adjust to the call center agent’s English communication level. On the contrary, it is the call center agent’s responsibility to turn his English communication skill up a notch and be familiar with common English idioms and expressions to communicate effectively with the customer like a native English speaker.

What Are English Language Idioms?

The CAMBRIDGE English Dictionary defines idioms as a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word on its own. MIRRIAM-WEBSTER adds idioms are a form of language peculiar to a people, or to a district, community or class. WIKIPEDIA says an idiom is a common word or phrase with a culturally understood meaning that differs from what its composite words’ denotations would suggest. Taking all these definitions into consideration, we can say that an English language idiom is a form of English speech or expression peculiar to a geographic or cultural group where the words taken together has a completely different meaning from the individual definitions of each word in the phrase. English language idioms are not to be taken literally. For example, the English language idiom “more than one way to skin a cat” may sound rather cruel if taken literally but all it means is “there’s always a way around every problem”. Thankfully, this English idiom has absolutely nothing to do with cats and no cats were harmed (or skinned) in the making of this idiom. While there are English language idioms unique only to certain geographic or cultural groups, there also are idioms common to practically every one. This article will deal mainly with the more common English language idioms that non-native speaking call center agents will find most useful in their every day calls.

Why Learn English Language Idioms?

English language idioms separate native English speakers from other call center agents who basically just know how to speak English. Again, the ability to speak English well is not enough to make one a native English speaker. English language idioms provide color to an otherwise plain and boring English conversation. Call center agents need to learn English language idioms and use them appropriately to be able to converse with their customers like native English speakers. The customer is probably aware she’s talking with a call center agent offshore but she would not mind that fact as long as she is at ease talking with a native sounding speaker. Using English language idioms and sounding native gives customers the impression that you are familiar with their situation and are in a better position to understand and resolve their concern. This is the main reason why customers will usually ask to speak with somebody else when they feel the call center agent handling them does not “talk their language”. The ability to use English language idioms appropriately gives call center agents that much needed advantage to immediately strike rapport with the customer and talk with them more confidently. A word of caution: use English language idioms only when appropriate and make certain you know exactly what each idiom actually means. You do not want to open a “can of worms” using English language idioms inappropriately. Don’t overdo your idioms. Using the wrong idiom at the wrong time is much worse than not using any idiom at all.

How to Learn English Language Idioms

I’m almost certain there must be thousands of English language idioms being used everyday in the English-speaking universe and I will make it clear right now that I will not attempt to discuss each one of these idioms. We will just focus our attention to a handful of common English language idioms that I have used personally and know will be most useful to call center agents. But don’t let me stop you from learning more English language idioms. As I always say: “Never stop learning.” There are a number of ways you can learn English language idioms effectively:

• Search Engines:

  Google the term “English language idioms” and immediately you have well over 7.5 Million search engine results about English language idioms available for your consumption; Searching for “English Idioms for Business” gives you a mind-boggling 33.7 Million search results! Suffice to say, there’s a ton of information on English language idioms available on Google;

• YouTube:

  As of this writing, there are well over 160 thousand videos on YouTube on topics related to English language idioms and English idioms for business;

English Language Idioms YouTube Video

• Movies & Television:

  Every time you watch an English movie or television program, make a conscious effort to note down any English language idiom you hear and try to Google those idioms to know what they actually mean. You might also want to try and emulate how they delivered those idioms. You might want to leave out profanities and other colorful expressions which you are bound to encounter depending on the movie or program you’re watching;

• Your Customers:

  You are on the phone listening to different customers at least 40 hours a week. If that isn’t immersing yourself in English language idioms then I don’t know what is. Make every call a learning experience for you. If you’re allowed to use pen and paper on the operations floor, by all means note down any English language idiom you hear your customer say then Google them later. If you can learn even one or two English idioms per day that would be at least ten new idioms you can add to your arsenal of English language idioms every week.

25 English Language Idioms I Love to Use

As mentioned earlier, since there are practically thousands of English language idioms being used every day, this part of the article will just focus on idioms I have personally used in my conversations with customers. Modesty aside, I had customers tell me they thought I was in the US or something along that line. I take this as a validation that I probably sounded native to them. Of course, I always tell them I’m offshore but they don’t seem to mind that at all. To my customers, what mattered most is we were “on the same page” and we clearly understood each other. I’m sorry I’ve been “beating around the bush” up to this point so I’m not going to delay any longer. Let’s “get the ball rolling”. Here are 25 of the English language idioms I love to use:

• Rule of thumb: a generally accurate guide or principle based on experience
• Go the extra mile: to go beyond what is expected to please a customer
• Call a spade a spade: to be blunt and truthful
• Cost an arm and a leg: very costly or expensive
• Hit the nail on the head: to be accurate or correct
• Bitter pill: to accept an unpleasant situation
• I’m all ears: to listen intently or focus on what the customer is saying
• Best of both worlds: a win-win situation; customer gets all advantages
• Call it a day: to stop working or to end a task
• A silver lining: be optimistic there is still hope
• Hit two birds with one stone: to accomplish two tasks at the same time
• Step up to the plate: to take action when something needs to be done
• The whole nine yards: give the customer everything
• You can say that again: Yes, I totally agree with you
• Straight from the horse’s mouth: to get information from a reliable source
• Ball’s in your court: it’s the customer’s turn to act or make a decision
• Barking up the wrong tree: blame the wrong person or look at the wrong place
• In a pickle: to be in a difficult situation
• Between a rock and a hard place: to be faced with two equally difficult choices
• In the same boat: an empathy statement meaning you’ve been there yourself
• Be on the same page: to understand each other
• Let’s shake on that: to reach an agreement with the customer
• Get the green light: get approval for a customer’s request
• I got you covered: to take care of everything for the customer
• Get the big picture: the general, overall or long-term plan

Additional Resources and Credits

If you had fun with these 25 English language idioms and thirsting for more, I highly recommend these following links where you can find more English language idioms you can use in your calls:

• 20 Essential English Idioms for Sounding Like a Native
• English Language Idioms for Business
• English Language Idioms
• LinguaMarina ESL Video

Thank you for spending time learning how English language idioms can help you. Hope this article empowers you to become a better native English speaker and be more confident conversing with your customers. If you found this article most useful, I would love to see you COMMENT or SHARE.

English Listening Skill Improvement Tips

Pop Quiz: Which skill is more important: English speaking skill or English listening skill? If you answered English listening skill, give yourself a pat on the back! This post will explain why.

In a previous POST, we talked about how important active listening is in communicating effectively with our customer. Even if you were the best English speaking rep on the floor but if your English listening skill sucks, then you can talk the entire shift without really addressing your customer’s main concern. You just wasted your customer’s time and gave her a bad customer experience.

Listening to your customer should not be so difficult; all you need to do is give her your 100% attention. The difficulty lies in the fact that the English language seems to have a kaleidoscope of variations. I’m sure you’ve had your share of those moments when you press your headset hard against your ears doing your best to focus on your call fully aware your customer’s speaking English but unable to decipher what she just said. That’s because English is a pretty tricky language. A Brit would pronounce the same word so differently from how an Aussie, or an Asian or a Yank would. Even a Yank from the Ozarks would say the same word quite so different from how a Yank from Chicago would. According to Call Center Manager and fellow blogger MARLON CELSO, we have to recognize and respect certain “nuances” every caller has. If you handle a US account, remember that America is a nation largely made up of a diversity of peoples and races from all across the globe so you have to anticipate that not every customer will speak English the same way even if they were from the same time zone. You will even get customers who can barely speak English at all so you need to anticipate these challenges as well.

Now that we realize how diverse the English speaking universe is, what do we do to improve our English listening skill? Stay with me over the next few minutes and I’ll share with you some very practical English listening skill improvement tips you can do in the comfort of your home. I have personally used these English listening skill tips while I was an agent and helped me a lot to become an SME and later on a sup so I know these tips are effective. These English listening skill improvement tips may seem a bit unorthodox I must admit but then being unorthodox is what makes you stand out from the rest. Cool? Let’s start!

TIP #1: CHOOSE YOUR TV PROGRAMS

No offense to those soap operas, telenovelas and noontime gag shows but I don’t see any educational value in them. They may be entertaining but definitely not educational as far as improving your English listening skill is concerned. If you’re really serious about improving your English listening skill, I strongly suggest you ditch those soaps for more intellectually stimulating channels like CNN, Fox News, BBC, HISTORY, DISCOVERY, NAT GEO and other similar English language channels. It would be helpful to listen to a broad diversity of English language programs coming from London, Australia, Canada, and from several US states like San Francisco, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Chicago, Texas, Louisiana, and others. Personally, I am particularly fond of reality programs like The Pickers, Swamp People, Border Security Australia, TRUTV, The Tonight Show and others mainly because most episodes are so natural and mostly unscripted. Each program provides you a slice of the culture, humor and nuances unique to a particular country or State. The aim here is to listen to the English language spoken in a broad diversity: Koreans, Filipinos and other Asians in San Francisco, Native Americans in Nevada, Hispanics and Latinos in New Mexico, Italians in New York, Creoles in Louisiana, the Canadians, the Brits, the Aussies, and every one else who speak English in their own peculiar way. Be particularly focused on accents, nuances, temperaments and commonly used idioms. Learn their culture or “CULCHA” as the Aussies would say! Eventually, after listening to these diverse versions of the English language for a while, you get used to these nuances and peculiarities until they start to sound common and almost second nature to you.  You can even go as far as confidently guess which State or country the customer is from.

TIP #2: LISTEN WITHOUT WATCHING

This time, we turn the challenge up a notch. With your favorite English TV show or movie playing, close your eyes and just listen. Don’t watch! Just listen. And try not to fall asleep either. The logic here is that we only get to listen to our customers but never see them over the phone. By training ourselves to “watch” the TV show with just our ears, we learn to focus on their words and try to understand what they’re saying without the benefit of seeing their lips or their body language. Again, learn to listen to a broad diversity of English TV shows so that you can listen to different accents, idioms and nuances. Once you’re quite accustomed to listening to these different shows, let’s turn the challenge another notch higher by going court stenographer at home. With the TV on, go to your laptop and try to listen and type down what you heard or what you think you heard on TV. It doesn’t have to be verbatim unless you can type real fast. You just need to have a way to confirm the gradual improvement you have been achieving since you started these English listening skill improvement tips. Besides, you’re also practicing a real-world task of typing down notes of what the customer is saying. And if I’m not mistaken, you probably went through this same exercise when you applied as a call center agent. It’s so motivating to see how much improvement you have made so far. Go give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it! As the Brits would say,” Cheerio! Jolly good show chap!”

TIP #3: BE FAMILIAR WITH IDIOMS

By now, you probably have been listening to those English TV shows for a while and hopefully have noticed a marked improvement in your English listening skill. The next step is to be familiar with idioms, phrases and expressions you commonly hear on those shows. Make a list of expressions and idioms you frequently hear. Leave out those colorful F words because you obviously won’t be cussing on the phone or hopefully don’t have to. Right about here would be your best opportunity to Google any idiomatic expression or phrase you aren’t familiar with so that when you again encounter those idioms you already know what the customer is trying to say. We don’t necessarily have to use these idioms and phrases when talking with our customers but it would be nice to at least be familiar with these expressions just in case we need to break the ice or build rapport. Imagine if your customer tries to be friendly and dishes out a joke using a phrase or expression you’re totally unfamiliar with and all you can say is “uh-huh”. Awkward isn’t it? Best be ready when the need arises.

TIP #4: RATE YOUR ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL

Finally, just so you’d be more confident with your English listening skill, I strongly suggest you rate yourself by taking an English Listening Skill Level Test. There are several sites available on the internet that you can try. I have listed at least two English listening skill test links below. I encourage you to try these tests. I suggest you take these tests before and after practicing the English listening skill improvement tips in this article so you can document how much improvement you actually made.

•English Listening Skill Test 1
•English Listening Skill Test 2

Your English listening skill plays an important role in accurately and efficiently resolving issues and making your customer happy. Hopefully, you will find these English listening skill improvement tips helpful in becoming more confident and successful in your job.

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Advantages of Customer Service Outsourcing

Customer Service Outsourcing

Customer service outsourcing is the business practice of contracting an enterprise outside of your company to perform customer service functions for you. Historically, outsourcing as a business concept started in the early 1800s during the Industrial Revolution. During this period, manufacturers outsourced certain manufacturing processes to expert artisans who have the experience and equipment to perform the process more efficiently. Manufacturers would rather outsource than invest money in acquiring equipment and training inexperienced workers who could leave the company at anytime after mastering the trade. Profit is almost always the main motivation for outsourcing and this holds true even today.

Regardless whether you own a small business or a giant billion-dollar conglomerate, there are a variety of customer service outsourcing companies available to handle your customer service needs, from large thousand-seat call centers to work from home virtual call center representatives. You have the choice of outsourcing customer service within your community or even go offshore. Although there are pros and cons as far as outsourcing your customer service is concerned and a lot had already been written about these topics, this article will mainly focus on the 3 main advantages why outsourcing your customer service needs makes good business sense.

To OUTSOURCE or not to OUTSOURCE

PROFIT
Practically every business we know does business for profit. From small food trucks to giant TELCOs, profit has always been the primary motivation for doing business. Even bloggers would monetize their blogs for profit, or at least hope to profit eventually.  Businesses will always want to find any means to save a few bucks and increase profit. Believe it or not, even China, where most manufactured products are outsourced to, also outsource their production to other countries that offer lower wages and production costs, all in the name of profit. If you could do business more efficiently for less, then that makes good business sense. Customer service is undeniably a profit center for any business. It won’t matter how great your product is, if your customer service stinks, chances are nobody’s going to do business with you again. It’s clear that you need to have a customer service team to touch base with your customers and keep those customers motivated to do more business with you. But it costs money to maintain an in-house customer service team, especially if your business isn’t that large yet. You need to hire more full time employees. Pay more for health benefits. Pay more for utilities. You need to get the services of a customer service consultant to train your new people for several days. You need to have dedicated computer workstations and the necessary customer service software installed in each workstation. Bottom line, it takes a chunk off of your profit to maintain a dedicated in-house customer service team. One of your best solutions would be outsourcing your customer service to another company which already specializes in providing excellent customer service. This way, you don’t have to worry about paying additional wages and benefits or spending more on additional hardware. Usually with customer service outsourcing, you only pay per call handled so you don’t have to worry about paying a full day’s wage for half a day’s work. Now that’s cost-effective! And you can be confident that with customer service outsourcing, people handling your customers have already been well trained and had plenty of experience in the subtle art of customer service.

FOCUS ON YOUR CORE BUSINESS
While customer service is an essential part of your business, it is not your core business. Outsourcing your customer service frees you and your in-house team to focus on the more important aspects of your core business such as developing new products, streamlining production and increasing sales. Your company may have the best engineers or accountants in-house but you cannot expect them to be customer service savvy. Asking your engineer to do customer service is like asking a neurologist to extract your tooth. Besides, it is not cost-effective to be paying your engineers top dollars only to have them on the phone taking care of customers. I am 100% certain they never taught empathy, soft skills, active listening, and handling irate customers in engineering school. It’s best to leave the customer service function to qualified customer service outsourcing companies whose core business is to WOW your customers and keeping them motivated to do business with you again and again.

DEDICATED COMPETENT TEAM
Customers hate incompetence. The number one reason customers switch loyalty to your competitor is bad customer experience. Customer service outsourcing companies put a premium on getting the right customer service people for you and further upgrading their competency and soft skills to ensure your customers are happy and remain loyal to your brand. The logic here is simple: As long as your customers are happy, then you’re happy and as long as you’re happy, the outsourcing company is happy to keep your business. And because customer service knows no rest days or off hours, you even have the option to ask your customer service outsourcing company to provide a dedicated 24/7 team for you to take care of customer service issues round the clock, something your in-house team would probably not be too happy to do. Imagine how happy your customer would feel getting an issue resolved efficiently at 2 in the morning instead of waiting for your office to open at 9. Now that’s great customer service.

“Outsourcing and globalization of manufacturing allows companies to reduce costs, benefits consumers with lower cost goods and services, causes economic expansion that reduces unemployment, and increases productivity and job creation.” Larry Elder, US Radio Host and Writer

There must be a dozen more reasons why you should consider outsourcing your customer service and perhaps another dozen reasons why you should not. Make sure the benefits of outsourcing your customer service will far outweigh the reasons why you should not. Do your due diligence. Talk or chat with top customer service outsourcing companies to see how much it may actually cost you to start outsourcing. Today more than ever, the term “outsourcing” has a negative connotation especially in developed countries like the US and the UK as it brings to mind taking jobs away and bringing it elsewhere. While it may be true that outsourcing did take some jobs away, it is also true that outsourcing made it possible for a majority of businesses which outsourced to cut costs, survive and even thrive through difficult economic times. Outsourcing even made it possible for businesses to open employment opportunities in other more specialized trades.

If you are a small business owner interested to know more about outsourcing customer service, click the banner below and check out onlinejobs.ph to see how easy it is to search for talented Filipino virtual customer service professionals.



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