A phone call from a customer

Listen to the phone call from a customer to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

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Transcript

Junko: Hello, Junko Mori speaking. How can I help you?

Andrea: Hi, Junko, it's Andrea here from Red Band. I'm calling about our latest order.

Junko: Everything arrived OK, right? We got the delivery confirmation at our end.

Andrea: Yes, everything's fine with the order. I'm calling about the invoice and the payment terms. I need a favour.

Junko: A favour? What do you need?

Andrea: This is a little, er ... difficult, but I need an extension on the payment terms. I know they're usually 30 days, but we're having some cash flow problems. You'd really be helping us out if you could extend it to 60 days.

Junko: I'm not sure if I can do that, Andrea. We've got regulations at our end, and also have to manage our own cash flow.

Andrea: I promise this won't become the norm, Junko. Actually, I also want to place another new order. The same size order as last time. It's for an important customer and they pay on delivery.

Junko: I see. So your cash flow problem will be solved after this new order is delivered.

Andrea: Exactly.

Junko: That sounds good. Hold on, Andrea. Let me see what I can do. Yes, I think we can make an exception this time.

Andrea: That's great, Junko. I appreciate your help.

Junko: And we appreciate your business, Andrea. It works both ways.

Andrea: Thanks again, Junko. Can you send me a quick email confirmation of the payment terms extension?

Junko: Sure, no problem. We're happy to help you.

Andrea: Great. And I'll email you the new order.

Junko: Thanks. I'll keep an eye out for it. Talk to you soon.

Andrea: You too. Goodbye.

Task 1

Exercise

Task 2

Exercise

Discussion

Do you ever do favours or make exceptions for important clients?

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Language level

B1 Intermediate

Hello rerre,

Grammatically it would not be wrong and it would make sense. However, certain phrases are simply more commonly used by convention and the continuous form is generally used. A common alternative would be 'It would be a great help'.

If you check the transcript you'll notice that we use would rather than will. This is a more polite way of expressing the same thing in this context.

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Hi Peter, Thank you for your explanation! It was very helpful. rerre

I have studied criminal law. This is a great and very enjoyable dispute between philosophy of law that the rules should be flexible or they should be constant or fixed. In spite of those dispute, I should say that the rule constancy has many experimental and useful function. Firstly, it helps people to know about their rights and obligations. Secondly, it will become our habit and we would act very well and without any problems by the rule consistancy. Thirdly, managers and other people cannot behave illegal against customers. And so on. But we should be more flexible is a necessary in our lives especially in business. A good rule or law is that can manage our lives and allows some sensible exceptions which are necessary.

Thank you so much for this nice website, but I ask for downloading the audio if it is possible!

Hello Sharif Tayyebi

You're very welcome! You can download any of the audio on our website (but not video). It's easiest if you use a computer -- just right-click on the audio player and then choose the 'Save audio as' option.

Let us know if you have any trouble with that.

All the best

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

I am an evaluation manager, so different evaluation consulting firms and independent consultants submit to me their products under certain contracts. Just a few of them have requested some exceptions in terms of new dates to present the expected deliverables. Most of the time, considering the timely submissio of previous deliverables and the need to get quality products, I have accepted their requests.

I think the rules is makes for help us, but sometimes the rules can interfere, so, in this cases we can do one exeption. For me is reallly importan be flexible and act with intelligence and common sense in this way we can modify the rules in some specific cases.

If I am a supplier, I would make favor to my strategic clients. I will do my best to get their loyalty by giving them exceptions in price, payment terms and what they need without cause harm to the organisation.

I think you have to allow the extension , only for customers that you know well. Your loyalty customer, you have to be sure that they will pay you and don't make trouble in your cash flow.

Yes, I extended a terminal payments to my friend for a year...