Customer service

Keynote
The currency of the new economy is trust,
Rachel Botsman
B1–C2
Discussion
1 Work in groups. Discuss the questions.
1 Have you bought any of these things online recently: clothes or shoes, travel or entertainment
tickets, music, books or entertainment, other goods or services? Which?
2 Which of these online marketplaces have you used or would you consider using? What concerns
would you have about using them?
eBay (all goods, new and second-hand) Airbnb (room rental) Uber (taxi service)
3 How can sellers of goods and services in these marketplaces build trust with customers? Make a
list of possible ways.
4 Are these ways different from the ways companies traditionally build trust with their customers?
If so, how?

Key words
2 Match the words and phrases in bold with their definitions (a–j).
1 It takes years for a company to build its reputation, but just one piece of bad publicity can
destroy it in a moment.
2 I stayed with a local family when I was learning Spanish in Madrid. They were wonderful hosts.
3 My son is doing work experience in an advertising company, but he’s not learning much. They get
him to run errands, like making photocopies or going out to get sandwiches.
4 We have a monthly peer-to-peer review in our company where colleagues can say what they
think of each other’s work.
5 You won’t be able to borrow the money to buy a new flat unless you have a good credit rating.
6 The new product design was a collaborative effort. Eighteen of us, from the R&D and the
marketing departments, all worked on it.
7 People don’t trust her because she has left a trail of unhappy customers behind her wherever she
has worked.
8 We use a dashboard of different indicators to measure the performance of each business unit.
9 When asked what their most valuable asset is, most companies will say it’s their employees.
10 A business needs capital to be able to survive bad times.

a someone of the same age and status ____________________

b a measurement of a person or organization’s ability to repay money ____________________
c a mark or sign showing where someone has been ____________________
d what you are known or famous for ____________________
e produced by working together ____________________
f tasks or jobs you are sent somewhere to do ____________________
g people who welcome others as guests in their homes ____________________
h a thing of value that a person or company owns ______________________
i financial or other valuable resources owned by a company ____________________
j a panel of instruments (usually in a car, but also in business) showing different measurements
____________________

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 Customer service
The currency of the new economy is trust
Comprehension
3 Watch Rachel Botsman’s TED Talk, The currency of the new economy is trust on TED.com in
three sections. After each section, complete the words in the sentences.
A 0.11–5.14
1 Sebastian Sandys is a h__________ on Airbnb. He bought a cat to protect his r__________.
2 The idea of Airbnb – an online marketplace offering s__________ the chance to stay in your
home – seems crazy, but it is now very popular.
3 Botsman calls this new kind of economic model ‘c__________ consumption’.
4 The idea behind this new model is making connections online and s__________ things, like cars,
offices or knowledge.

B 5.14–11.35
5 The key ingredients for these new marketplaces to function are t__________ and efficiency.
6 TaskRabbit is a website where people can make and receive offers of help to do e__________.
7 The question is: how can we trust strangers to do a good job if we haven’t met them
f__________ to f__________ ?
8 The answer is to have a r__________ system (like Amazon’s star system) where people are
scored according to their efficiency.

C 11.35–end
9 Botsman’s idea is that because each person leaves an online t__________ of what they’ve done,
it’s possible to make a reputation d__________ giving a complete picture of what each person is
good and bad at.
10 Reputation data can also be useful in r__________ , for both the employer and the employee, as
the case of programmers working for Stack Overflow shows.
11 Building one’s reputation in this way gives individuals the p__________ to control their own
economic activity.

4 Can you remember what people were doing on each of these collaborative websites? Tell your
partner. Then watch the TED Talk again from 4.23–5.14 and check your answers. Which idea
appeals to you particularly?
1 WhipCar
2 Spinlister
3 Looscubes
4 Landshare
5 Zopa and Lending club
6 Skillshare
7 DogVacay

The big idea

5 Work in groups. Discuss the questions.
1 Rachel Botsman believes that in future we will each have ratings on a reputation dashboard that
will give us an opportunity to make money and get better jobs. How could this idea help
businesses in their relationships with employees?
2 How could this idea help businesses in their relationships with customers?
3 What are the negative effects of collaborative consumption on traditional businesses?
4 How can traditional businesses incorporate collaborative consumption into their business model?
5 What would your personal ‘reputation dashboard’ look like?

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 Customer service
The currency of the new economy is trust
Language focus – selling trust online
6 Complete the extract from the TED Talk (where Rachel Botsman delivers her key message) with
these words. Then watch the talk again om .35 and check your answers.
behave booked earn leave shared star trade trail trusted
‘Now, I know what you might be thinking. Well, this isn't anything new. Just think of power
sellers on eBay or 1__________ ratings on Amazon. The difference today is that, with every
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___________ we make, comment we 3__________ , person we flag, badge we 4__________ ,
we leave a reputation 5__________ of how well we can and can't be 6__________ . And it's not
just the breadth but the volume of reputation data out there that is staggering. Just consider this:
five million nights have been 7__________ on Airbnb in the past six months alone. 30 million rides
have been 8__________ on Carpooling.com. This year, two billion dollars’ worth of loans will go
through peer-to-peer lending platforms. This adds up to millions of pieces of reputation data on
how well we 9__________ or misbehave.’

7 Choose the correct verbs to complete this description of collaborative consumption.

What is the real idea behind collaborative consumption? Is it to 1create / found new markets, as
some people say? Not really, because in many cases those markets already exist. Is it to 2add /
join extra value to transactions, by helping people not just to buy things, but to 3do / make
meaningful connections at the same time? Or is it to try to 4interrupt / disrupt the current
capitalist system and to get us to 5share / split things more, rather than buying new things all the
time? In some cases, it does certainly help communities to 6construct / build trust. The Internet
seems to make people more trusting, as we can see when people happily 7hand over / hand on
their credit card details to strangers. But at the heart of it is a wish, as Rachel Botsman says, to
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fit / match our ‘haves’ to our ‘wants’ in a more democratic way.

Speaking
8 Work in small groups. One element o a company’s eputation is its custome se vice. Discuss
your own experiences of good and bad customer service in online transactions. Then complete
this list o ‘The keys to good custome se vice’ with three more rules.
The keys to good customer service
1 Design a good website where customers can easily find out about shipping information,
your returns policy, contact hours and details, and the answers to FAQs.
2 Respond to customer queries quickly. Customers hate waiting.
3 Make sure employees have the resources to solve customer problems, not just to read from
a call centre script. Train them to deal with problems flexibly, knowledgeably and sensitively.
4 __________________________________________________________________________
5 __________________________________________________________________________
6 __________________________________________________________________________

9 Compare your ideas with another group.

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