- •1. What unwritten rules do you imagine you might encounter?
- •2. How can companies help interns to adapt to their work culture?
- •3. Describe a company’s possible structure.
- •1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in a call centre?
- •2. Are you for or against outsourcing call centers from industrialized countries to the developing world?
- •3. Describe skills and qualities of an efficient helpline operator.
- •4. What annoys you most as a customer?
- •1. What is the difference between customer service and customer support?
- •2. Why is customer support important?
- •3. How do many modern companies view complaints?
- •1. What communication facilities do you know (telephones and beyond)? (u.47)
- •2. Describe a phoning scenario. (u.48)
- •1. What are the functions of packaging?
- •2. What are the qualities and structure of a good presentation?
- •3. What stages of product development do you know?
- •1. What does the term product refer to?
- •2. What should sales staff know about the finished product?
- •1. What are the famous ‘4 Ps’ of marketing? (u.22-25)
- •2. What do you know about brands and branding? (u.22)
- •3. What can you say about pricing? (u.23)
- •4. What types of shops do you know? (u.24)
- •5. What is direct marketing? (u.24)
- •6. What advertising media can you name? (u.25)
- •7. What promotional activities may be used by retailers? (u.25)
- •4. Give an example of a person’s career (with the events in chronological order).
- •5. Think of advantages and disadvantages of taking a gap year and the ways of spending it.
- •2. What are skills and qualities of ‘the right person” companies look for? (u.4)
- •3. What types of pay and benefits may an employee receive? (u.5)
- •1. Do you prefer shopping in a store or on a website? Give your reasons.
- •2. What measures do e-tailers take to turn surfers into shoppers?
- •3. What is a conversational agent?
- •4. What steps in an e-tail transaction can you name?
- •1. What issues might be subject to negotiation?
- •2. What are the key techniques used during the negotiation?
- •2. What types of negotiation do you know? (u.62)
- •3. How can you prepare to negotiate? (u.63)
- •4. What should you do when negotiations get stuck? (u.65)
- •1. What are good and wrong reasons for mergers and acquisitions?
- •2. What are the five Gs of a possible acquisition?
- •3. How are mergers and acquisitions perceived by employees/ shareholders/ customers/ the general public?
- •4. Give examples of a company’s performance.
- •1. What problems may an acquisition bring to a target company?
- •5. What types of stakes do you know? (u.34)
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working in a call centre?
Obviously, working in a call centre has both advantages and disadvantages. There are 2 points of view on working in a call centre.
On the one hand, it gives good opportunity to earn money e.g. for students. This kind of work is easy and you don’t have to be well educated to do it, you just should know all details about product or service, which is given by your company. This type of work can have flexible working hours, so it allows you to combine it with studies or some other job. Also it provides a good working experience.
On the other hand working in a call centre is extremely hard. First of all you should remember that from time to time you have to communicate with aggressive, impatient customers, because sometimes you can’t help them. Moreover this job doesn’t have any perspective. Many people seem it as a dead-end job. So, it could seem really stressful and boring.
2. Are you for or against outsourcing call centers from industrialized countries to the developing world?
FOR: Outsourcing enables companies to:
Reduce costs
Be more competitive by offering customers lower price and better service
Preserve job in production
Benefit from more competent and more motivated staff
Bring new technology to developing countries
Help developing countries to improve their economies
AGAINST: Outsourcing makes customers angry due to:
Language and cultural problems
Operators not having local knowledge enough
Outsourcing is responsible for:
Job losses in industrialized countries
Exploitation of desperate workers in developing countries
Emphasizing inequalities between east and west
3. Describe skills and qualities of an efficient helpline operator.
A helpline operator should have many different skills and qualities to become an efficient. One of the most important things is language maintenance. First of all good communication and listening skills are essential for helpline operator. Besides they need to be patient, polite, good-natured and reasonably intelligent person.
And then computer literacy, good typing speed, marketing skills are real plus for every helpline operator. Moreover in my opinion efficient helpline operator should know some golden rules. For examples, customer is always right, pay attention to details, give customer what you promise.
4. What annoys you most as a customer?
There are many different situations, which could displease customers. When I come in a retail-store, there could be assistants, who don’t know any special features of the product or who are extremely pushy. Most of the time they try to impose their opinion on you. It’s really annoying.
When I call customer service, I want to talk to a person, not to machine, which just could say:
If you want this please press one, if you want that, please press two, but I would prefer to talk to human.
Sometimes you have to wait for ages and when you finally speak to someone, either they say they will call you back and then you never hear from them again. It could be really disappointing. Moreover they tell you to hold on again and you get another machine to playing the same 20 seconds of Vivaldi again and again, and then finally you go back to the beginning again. Unfortunately, all this things put your off the company.
As for e-tailing any customers would feel disappointment, when courier delivers the wrong or faulty product.