Singapore English & Customer service
After watching this excellent video from childhoodspeech.com I got thinking.
The video highlights the way people from other cultures (specifically Singapore) who don’t speak english as a first language are forced to use only the words they know to explain what they mean. They don’t generally have the grammer or syntax skills to get their message over.
That’s not to be negative about people who don’t speak english as a first language.
But it got me thinking about customer service in the UK.
Even being a native speaker of English, there are times when the answers we give to questions, or the way we phrase a question can still lead to misunderstanding and lack of communication.
In general if we do not understand what we are being told we get frustrated. We either get louder or we start to speak more slowly to the person we are trying to understand, as though they are the stupid ones.
“You never listen to me” – shouts the Dad to his teenage son (and vice versa)
What gets our backs up is if we feel that we are “slighted” because short answers do not seem to give us the full facts.
The average UK customer wants to know the reason WHY something happens.
- WHY is this item out of stock?
- WHY can’t it be delivered before next week?
- WHY did my computer crash?
Quite often the answer won’t do them any good but they just have a need to know.
Quite often – A common customer service tactic in the UK is to “get rid” of the customer.
Get them off the phone, out of the store, go somewhere else
One thing is for sure – a “stilted answer” might be short but it is more than likely that the customer will come back to seek clarification or worse – tell their friends about how rude your staff were.
PS – I recommend that you check out childhoodspeech.com too !
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For non-native speakers, learning grammar is an academic undertaking which requires time, focus and concentration. Where business has to come first before language, there is not much time to learn.
Actually, if you change the tone, some of the “stilted answers” can sound quite friendly in some cases. Like “This shoe very comfortable, I also got wear.” at 2:26. Notice there is no negative in the choice of words. If spoken softly and in a friendly tone, the customer (who is also native Singaporean) actually feels well served.
Singapore has always used English as the state language to administer the country’s day to day activities and all schools use English as the language of instruction for all subjects. The native languages spoken by the different races and ethnic groups are also taught. In other words, English is now the first language and all others second language. Malay remains the national language of the nation.
The country will be celebrating 44th year of independence day on 9th August 2009. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Annie – thanks for the additions. I once read that when non english speaking soccer players come to england, they are advised to learn the “stock answers” in interview questions first. English football has a tradition of being slightly cliched in some of its answers and I wondered what you thought of this approach?