Business English Pod / Business Skills 360 / Page 15

Skills 360 – How to Get Good Customer Service (1)

Business English, Business Skills 360, Customer Service /

Welcome back to Skills 360 for today’s lesson on how to get good customer service.

You probably know what bad customer service looks like. We’ve all been there. Maybe you’ve stood in line at a computer store to return a defective piece of equipment and the clerk asks you rudely “Well, how do you know it’s broken? Did you plug it in?” Or you’ve called your phone company to change your service and when you finally make it through the voice menus to a real person, you get put on hold for 10 minutes. It’s crazy, right? We are paying customers, and we get treated like this? So if you’ve ever felt your blood boil in situations like these, listen up. Let’s talk about how to get good customer service.

Free Resources: Transcript | Quizzes | PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3

Skills 360 – Staying Positive (Part 2)

Business English, Business English Vocabulary, Business Skills 360 /

In today’s Skills 360 lesson we’re going to build on last weeks ideas and look at how you can implement at positive attitude at work.

In our last episode we talked about positive thinking. Today it’s all about maintaining a positive attitude toward others because it will help them feel good. And if you can do that, customers will want to do business with you, colleagues will want to work with you, and bosses will want to see you do well.

Free Resources: Transcript | Quizzes | PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3

Skills 360 – Staying Positive (Part 1)

Business English, Business Skills 360 /

Welcome back to the Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on keeping a positive outlook.

It’s the start of a new year. And when you look ahead at 2013, what do you see? Do you see great things for yourself, for your business, or for your career? Or do you see doom and gloom, trouble in the workplace, and a global economic mess? Well, I hope you focus on all the positives, even if the negatives exist. And what I want to do is to help you focus on these good things, because positive thinking can help us get where we want to go.

Free Resources: Transcript | Quizzes | PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3

Skills 360 – Organizing your Ideas (Part 2)

Business English, Business Skills 360, Communication, Management English /

Welcome back to the Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on organizing your ideas.

Last week we looked at several ways to brainstorm ideas. But once you have a big list of ideas, what are you going to do with them? That’s what we’ll talk about today.

We’ll look at how to organize your ideas around your objective and put them into groups of related points.

Discussion Questions

1. What are the different situations in your work in which you have to persuade people?
2. How much time would you normally spend preparing for a one-hour presentation?
3. What techniques do you use to develop and organize your ideas?

Free Resources: Transcript | Quizzes | PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3

Skills 360 – Organizing your Ideas (Part 1)

Business English, Business Skills 360, Communication, Management English /

In today’s lesson, were going to look at how to organize your ideas.

When it comes to ideas, you’ve probably got lots of them. And sure, they’re important to you. But are they important to others? Well, they could be, but only if they’re clear and organized. You’ve probably been frustrated when people run on at length about what they think using vague language. And you’ve probably tuned out when someone jumps around chaotically from idea to idea without tying it all together with a purpose. That just doesn’t work. And sometimes it’s not the best ideas that win, but the ones that are most clearly articulated.

Today we’ll look at a few different frameworks for generating ideas. In this case, we’re using a form of organization to actually get the ideas flowing.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you have any special ways of brainstorming ideas?
2. Think of someone who you think speaks well. How does he/she organize ideas?
3. Do you ever write out lists of advantages and disadvantages or pros and cons?

Free Resources: Transcript | Quizzes | PDF Transcript

Download: Podcast MP3