Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on handling a tech support call in English.
A colleague calls you with a problem. You listen, you ask questions, and you figure out a solution. But you can’t fix the problem yourself – you need to explain to your colleague how they can fix it. It doesn’t matter how simple the solution is to you, you have to make it clear to the other person. And that can be challenging. Fortunately, you can learn some ways of making your instructions clear and effective.
In today’s lesson, we’ll listen to a tech support agent explain a solution to a computer user. But don’t worry if you don’t work in tech support. The techniques this agent uses are useful in any situation where you need to provide support or solutions to someone else. We’ll cover language that you can use to explain a solution in clear steps and explain the reasons for those steps. We’ll also look at how you can recap the steps in a solution, confirm that solution actually worked, and emphasize to someone how to deal with similar problems in the future.
In the dialog, we’ll rejoin Nick and Stacey. Nick is a tech support agent, and Stacey’s a lawyer in New York who is having trouble uploading documents to the company server. Nick has discovered the cause of the problem and is now explaining to Stacey how to fix it.
Listening Questions
1. What does Nick ask Stacey to do first?
2. Why does Nick ask Stacey to upload another PDF from her computer?
3. What should Stacey do next time she has a problem uploading a file?
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