{"id":41,"date":"2007-06-19T21:18:06","date_gmt":"2007-06-19T13:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/2007\/07\/02\/bep-53-adv-customer-service-handling-complaints-part-1-empathizing\/"},"modified":"2007-07-18T19:59:10","modified_gmt":"2007-07-18T11:59:10","slug":"bep-53-adv-customer-service-handling-complaints-part-1-empathizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/2007\/06\/19\/bep-53-adv-customer-service-handling-complaints-part-1-empathizing\/","title":{"rendered":"BEP 53 ADV (Transcript &#038; Exercises) &#8211; Handling Complaints: Empathizing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good customer service is essential to success in any industry, but it is particularly important in the service and hospitality sector. &#8220;Hospitality&#8221; means treating guests well; and here, we&#8217;re talking specifically about hotels. Because service is so vital to hospitality, hotels are a good place to look for excellent service practices.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll see that a very important part of handling angry customers is showing empathy: Empathy is similar to sympathy &#8211; it means showing that you understand the customer&#8217;s pain.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\" height=\"120\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"1\">\n<tr>\n<td height=\"30\" colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\"><strong>Premium Members <\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/aMember\/member.php\">(Sign up for access)<\/a>:<\/td>\n<td bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\"><strong>Online activities:<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"25%\" align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/icon_pdf2_1.gif\" width=\"45\" height=\"53\" \/><br \/>\n    <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter\/StudyNotes\/BEP053SN-Complaints1.pdf\">Study Notes<\/a> <\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"25%\" align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/icon_MP3_1.gif\" width=\"45\" height=\"53\" \/><br \/>\n    <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter\/PhraseCasts\/BEP053PC.mp3\">Phrases &amp; Practice<\/a><\/strong><\/td>\n<td bgcolor=\"#FFFFFF\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter\/Exercises\/BEP53QIZ.html\">BEP 53: Complaints &#8211; Empathizing &#8211; Quiz<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter\/Exercises\/BEP53CLZ.html\">BEP 53: Complaints &#8211; Empathizing &#8211; Gap-fill<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><script>\nfunction showhide(id){\n\tif (document.getElementById){\n\t\tobj = document.getElementById(id);\n\t\tif (obj.style.display == \"none\"){\n\t\t\tobj.style.display = \"\";\n\t\t} else {\n\t\t\tobj.style.display = \"none\";\n\t\t}\n\t}\n}\n<\/script><br \/>\n<strong>Listening Quiz:<\/strong> (Click a question to see the answer)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bad Example: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#\" onClick=\"showhide('11'); return(false);\"><strong>1)<\/strong>\tHow does the customer, Steve, learn the service associate&#8217;s name?<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\" id=\"11\">\n<font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong> Steve has to specifically ask the service associate, Jenna, for her name. This is not good customer service. <\/strong><\/font>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"#\" onClick=\"showhide('12'); return(false);\"><strong>2)<\/strong>\tWhat is Steve&#8217;s problem?<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\" id=\"12\">\n<font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong> Steve says his room is &#8220;freezing,&#8221; meaning very cold, and he can&#8217;t concentrate on his work.<\/strong><\/font>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"#\" onClick=\"showhide('13'); return(false);\"><strong>3)<\/strong>\tHow could Jenna have handled the complaint better?<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\" id=\"13\">\n<font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong> First, Jenna should have empathized better with Steve&#8217;s problem and then should have shown interest and concern by using active listening techniques.<\/strong><\/font>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Good Example: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#\" onClick=\"showhide('14'); return(false);\"><strong>1)<\/strong>\tWhen Steve says, &#8220;I&#8217;m at the end of my rope,&#8221; what does he mean?<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\" id=\"14\">\n<font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong> As mentioned in the debrief, this means you&#8217;ve used up all of your emotional energy or patience. If you are very tired or very angry, you can say &#8220;I&#8217;m at the end of my rope.&#8221; <\/strong><\/font>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"#\" onClick=\"showhide('15'); return(false);\"><strong>2)<\/strong>\tWhat does Sandy do to calm Steve down?<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\" id=\"15\">\n<font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong> To calm Steve down, Sandy uses a variety of techniques that we&#8217;re studying during these two episodes on complaints: He has an empathetic response to Steve&#8217;s pain &#8211; that is, He shows his sympathy for him. Also, he shows his professionalism and sincerity by accurately identifying the complaint and he listens actively to Steve, giving him the impression that he really cares. <\/strong><\/font>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good customer service is essential to success in any industry, but it is particularly important in the service and hospitality sector. &#8220;Hospitality&#8221; means treating guests well; and here, we&#8217;re talking specifically about hotels. Because service is so vital to hospitality, hotels are a good place to look for excellent service practices. We&#8217;ll see that a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,23,13],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessenglishpod.com\/learningcenter2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}