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ADVANCED INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION (AICC)

A complete training/coaching scheme to equip Indian call centre Agents / CSRs with ‘tools for the job’: the communication skills needed to meet UK customer expectations and maximise customer satisfaction

Contents Page (Extract from AICC Training Handbook)

Introduction

§ UK Customer Dissatisfaction: The scale of the problem; Its cause; The training solution.

§ Using this Handbook: how to deploy and de-brief each Exercise for maximum impact

§ AICC CRITERIA for Measuring Training Impact (Skills Improvement); for Accrediting/Certifying Competence; for registering levels of customer satisfaction

§ Executive summaries and Briefings, including managerial conditions for successful AICC whole-floor roll-out

Generic Briefing: How do misunderstandings across cultures occur?

Self-study ‘mini-course’ in how to recognise damaging misperceptions of meanings and intentions across cultural differences, for

(a) Indian Trainers, Quality, TLs, CSRs in providing user-friendly contact services to UK

(b) Western Managers in negotiating agreements or project managing in India

12 FORMAL TRAINING MODULES

(Topics underlined have additional short exercises for later informal team use.)

Module 1 ‘Cultural Misalignments’ in contact service calls between India and UK. Self-review ‘Where we’re at’; and analysis of case-study Call Transcript 1: what most commonly goes wrong in communicating a ‘call flow script’, and why

Module 2 Differences between Indian-English (I-E) and British-English (B-E)

Exercises on Mother-Tongue Influences (MTI) heard as ‘mistakes’ by UK customers: Grammar differences that produce misunderstandings, confusions, misgivings of confidence

Module 3 Differences between CSRs’ I-E and customers’ B-E in terms of

A. Intonation differences within words and within sentences: avoiding confusion in UK

B. Names of people and places: what to do if these are difficult to pronounce

C. ‘Tone’: Exercises in conveying meanings/intentions by Pacing and Intonation

Module 4 Idiomatic and other usages by B-E speaking UK customers

A. Exercises on Idioms/Colloquialisms most used by UK customers on the telephone but confusing/difficult for speakers of Indian-English; The AICC comprehensive dictionary of idioms used in contact centres calls; Why idioms are less important for their meanings than for signalling feelings

B. Multiple meanings in British-English

C. Colloquial phrases: key to flexible verbal fluency in British-English

D. Other B-E usages often confusing/difficult for Indian-English speakers: Politeness forms - Double negatives - Regionalisms - Rhetorical phrases - Disagreeing - Zero

Module 5 Communicating cross-culturally on the telephone: Case-study Transcript 2 with Briefings on: Apologies and Politeness - Handling of Names - Repetitions - Silences - Embedded feedback - Inappropriate/Misaligned ‘Small Talk’ - Sign-offs

Exercises on Making Appropriate Apologies and How to fill the (silence) Gap

Module 6 Cultural explanations for UK customer talk/behaviour in service calls:

Regionalism - Privacy - Humour - Understatement - Irony - Exercises on Sarcasm – (so-called) ‘Weather-talk’ - Explanation of UK Reactions/Attitudes to Indian accents

Module 7 Cultural contrasts in behaviours/interactions: the norms/expectations of Indian customer service compared with conventions of UK customer service - Case-study Exercises applying concept of ‘Script’ in ‘tele-talk’ exchanges. Verbal repertoire for explaining Technical terms/Jargon in lay person’s terms

Module 8 Adapting Indian communication styles in interactions with UK consumers:

Diagnostic questioning - Avoiding premature solutions - Conditioning expectations (limits of powers) - Indian Narrative Style - Personalised/responsive to B-E expectations (to avoid I-E effect as rigid and formulaic)

Module 9 Recognising and Defusing Anger – across cultures:

§ When customer is already angry at start of call

§ Picking up the signals when customer becomes angry during call – and how to resolve feelings instantly

§ Saying ‘No’/‘I don’t know’: why conventional “assertiveness” is counter-productive by I-E speakers towards B-E speakers. Plus best approaches to handling customer demands to be put through to a supervisor

§ The best solution: ways to prevent anger - especially anticipatory empathy

Module 10 Rapport-Building: Anticipatory Empathy + Active Listening

The core skills: the key is to know how they are differently understood / expressed in Indian style, compared with expressed (and expected by customers) in Western style.

Exercises for practising the AICC Bronze, Silver and Gold Standard skills of Building Rapport in customer service

Module 11 Exercises in Analysing Interactions - 20 case-study call recordings

Reducing unnecessary length; Handling anger; Filling silence gaps; Empathy and Reflexive ‘tone/register’.

Exercises in personalised and natural conversational style, to establish rapport in respectful but friendly manner [with comparisons Indian-UK Calls and UK-UK Calls]

Module 12

Review and practice: the Summary List of 19 AICC SKILLS for meeting Western customer service expectations; plus optional fuller list of 40

The AICC CRITERIA for assessing skills improvement, Accreditation and Certification

Identifying follow-up INDIVIDUAL COACHING needs

On-going TEAM Agendas for sustaining training impact in TL-led informal development

Optional supplementary Modules, if relevant:

Module 13: Indian CSRs and Managers in dialogue with American-English

Module 14: Generic skills for native-English speakers when using English in exchanges with people for whom English is a second (or third) learned language

Module 15: Standardised International Business conventions of text messaging

Copyright: John Twitchin and Centre for Inter-Cultural Communication, 2008

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