Workplace Lesson Idea: Responding to Customer Complaints

Your students need to deal with customer complaints. By the end of the lesson, your students will be able to respond to customer complaints.

• Blackboard or whiteboard & chalk or markers.
• Pen and paper.
• Student Handouts: Customer Service and People Complaining

• Warm-up: Write on the board “Customer Satisfaction”. Ask students what this means. Write the students’ words on the board. Ask students, “What happens when customers are not happy. What words do the customers say?” Write the words on the board. What words do your students say in response to these complaints? Write the words on the board.
• Find out from the human resources department or the supervisor about what their mission statement is concerning customer service. Use handout Customer Service. Talk about customer service highlighting their mission statement.
• Show pictures of People Complaining. Use these pictures to elicit conversations of complaints with supervisors, co-workers and customers. Write these conversations on the board. Use these conversations for student practice in pairs.
• Ask students about different situations when customers complain at their work. Who usually complains? What do they say? How does your student respond? Write all the words on the board. In pairs, practice the dialogues.
• Game: On an 8 ½ x 11 inch piece of paper students generate 10 complaints in complete sentences. Cut the 10 sentences up into 10 strips. A sentence strip might say, “Excuse me, I didn’t ask for pickles on my sandwich.” Put the sentence strips in the middle of the table face down. In a circle, one student reads the sentence strip to the person on their left. That person has to be able to respond to the complaint. Go around the whole circle giving each person a turn.