Call Center English: Tips from a Real Agent

Welcome back to another episode of the Peach Teach English Podcast! In this episode, I’m joined by Joseph, a bilingual call center agent, as we explore what it’s really like to use English in call centers — from preparing for interviews and answering common questions to learning essential customer service phrases and building confidence on the phone.

Whether you’re applying for your first call center job or already working in one, this episode will give you practical English tips and insights that will help you feel more confident in interviews, communicate clearly with customers, and succeed in your role.

This episode + transcript is ideal for intermediate and advanced English learners who want to practice listening comprehension, learn workplace vocabulary, and gain real-world advice from someone with call center experience.

Watch & Listen to the Peach Teach English Podcast:

📝 Episode 35 Transcript:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction

Welcome back to the Peach Teach English podcast. I'm Frankie Mesmer, your host, and today I have my guest, Joseph, who was my former student when he was in high school, and now he is a bilingual call center worker. Can you introduce yourself, Joseph?

Hey, everyone. My name is Joseph, and I am currently at another call center, and at the same time, I am studying psychology at the University of Envigado. So the ones you don't know too much about Colombia, which is the country I am right now, Frankie is. Envigado is another city located at the center side of Medellin. Whenever you guys wanna come here, you're welcome. Yes. You guys are all welcome to visit Colombia, and if you come to Medellin, you can hit us up, and I'd love to get like a cup of coffee or a beer or whatever and meet you guys. Great introduction, Joseph. And so you mentioned a little bit that you have some experience working in a call center.

00:59 Joseph’s Call Center Experience

How many call centers have you worked in? Just worked in two. And how many years of experience do you have working in a call center? It is gonna be almost three years now. You've worked for two call center companies, and you have three years of experience. Yes, exactly. Okay. Super cool, Joseph. So I want you to try to remember back to the beginning, maybe your first call center job or the second one you have now. Mm-hmm.

01:26 Advice for Call Center Job Interviews

What advice would you give to someone that is preparing for a job interview to work for a bilingual call center? Some of your relatives or your friends could mention something bad. It does not have to be. And even though most people could say, customer service, you feel like it's slave or stuff like that. It's not true at all.

Call centers are a very good way to start your working life. And you can learn a lot, grow as a person, because I'm not gonna lie that it helps you to be a better person, because that happened to me. I feel like the best change was how to be a good customer, like how I would like to be treated, that's what I would like to give. Whether it's a call, email, whatever. I wanna get respect. I think I should give respect first.

02:44 Common Interview Questions

And Joseph, what would you say are the most common interview questions that people ask when you go to the job interview for a call center? The interviews are not so hard, like a very common English conversation, like the one we're having currently. So they will ask you some things about yourself, your personal life, and they asked me, "Why do you feel like what you are studying will help you with this customer service position?" So, what do you think you can learn from it? And I just answered something like, "Well, both things are related to helping people, and I like to help people."

Yeah, that, that's a really good answer, Joseph. You know, as a psychologist, you get to help people. Oftentimes, people look for a psychologist when they have problems. Not always, but that is common, right? So yeah, you're having to deal with people that might have their emotions high. Maybe they're angry, they're sad, stressed, and yeah, you have to learn how to help them stay calm and get them to their solution. So obviously, psychology and customer service, very different jobs, but there are definitely some skills you can learn from both places to be a better employee, whether you are a customer service representative or a psychologist.

So that was an excellent answer. I don't remember too much about other questions about interviews. Like I mentioned, it's like a completely regular English conversation. It's not a big deal. So, they just kind of wanna see your general English level and ask you about your life, maybe your goals, ambitions. They are more focused on measuring your language skills in English and making sure you can handle the language and having a conversation in that language, of course. Okay. That's nice that it's not too difficult. I'm sure, though, every interview can be different, so, you know, it's good to still prepare and look at the common questions you might be asked, which could be, like you said, some general like tell me about yourself. Why do you want this job? Why should we hire you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? You know, how long do you plan to stay here? Like it, it's good to have, um, a strong answer for all of those types of questions, just in case.

05:28 Call Center Training Insights

But what's also important, Joseph, and you can tell me, they give you the job, but then you have to go through the training, right? They're going to make sure you have the English skills you need to handle clients or customers. And obviously not just good enough English, but it also needs to be professional and polite because it's customer service.

Right? So could you explain to us what was the training like and how did you feel during the training process? And there are two sides of the training here. So, the first one will be based on how to be polite as a professional in the customer service area. They give you some advice on how to show yourself respectful to the other people and how important it is to show yourself respectful during the interactions. The first thing completely important is to greet the customer.

My greeting is usually like, Hi, good morning, welcome to customer service. My name is Joseph. Who do I have the pleasure to speak with today? Then, the person tells me his name is, I don't know. John Smith just to make the example. So I say, Oh, hi, Mr. Smith. How are you today? That will make the call completely different as customer service interactions.

At the beginning, I hardly ever just focus on how the customer is feeling right now during the interaction. I just focus on, will you please tell me your phone number, your email, whatever I need to pull up the account, but it's really real important. I want to add something here for our listeners.

Rapport, I would say a business English term used in a lot of professional settings, rapport. Basically, it's referring to the relationship you have with people, and it could be good rapport or bad rapport, but obviously, you want to keep good rapport with your clients, your friends. Basically, that means that you have good trust, you know, it's friendly. You can be open about your problems, and also it's like being positive and giving feedback, and you wanna help each other really solve their problems and get better. That's like good rapport.

And then bad rapport would be all the opposite. You don't have a good relationship. You feel stressed when you need to talk to that person. You don't think you're really gonna get your problem solved. So yeah, whatever business you work in, you need to maintain good rapport. In customer service, you have to keep good rapport with that customer you're on the phone with.

They show us all a recording in which basically the person, well representative just started the call saying, How can I help you? Just like that. How can I help you? No good morning. No good afternoon. Just how can I help you? And we all agree that was not the best way to start the interaction. In customer service, it's really important to show that you are happy to help out the customers and always to provide the can-do attitude. Like I can and I will help you out definitely. No matter what, no matter how I'm feeling. I am here to help you. Exactly. I understand how you feel, but I am here to help you.

Yeah, because. I've had these experiences; maybe it's not a call center, but it's still customer service. Like, I go to the airport and I'm ordering Chinese food, and the person working in customer service doesn't greet you. They're just like, What do you want? You can just tell they're miserable. They don't want to help you, and you almost just want to leave and go to a different restaurant because of the terrible service.

So yeah, it's really important to try to keep that positive environment. It's normal to not love being at your job every second, but you're there. You have to be there. So it's better to try to see your work in a positive light, being thankful that you have a job and really trying to do your job well, because when you do your job well, you're naturally going to be happier when you're there than when you're just complaining about it all the time.

10:29 Essential Call Center Phrases

Could you just tell us what you think are some of the most common call center English phrases that you use in your daily life? You are not gonna use the same vocabulary if you are in a bank customer service as if you were on an airline customer service, or if you are internet customer service.

The language, the vocabulary will be completely different. To be general on these phrases, I usually use during my customer service. How can I help you? Or if you wanna sound more polite, you could use some phrases like, How may I assist you, today? Which sounds more polite. Some other phrases I usually use: let's go ahead and pull up your account here. Okay? This, you will use this phrase always whenever you have to find the customer's information on the system. So the most common ways to find a customer on the system, ask the phone number, the email address, the full name. So, something we're always doing in customer service, would you mind spelling your full name, your email address, whatever, letter by letter and associating every letter to a word?

It's basically A as in apple, B as in boy, C as in cat. So in that way, you will make sure you're understanding what they meant. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Now, if your customer service position is based on financial information, there is a term I always used, which is fee. F-E-E Fee for payment. I always like to use that when I was gonna talk about payments with customers, and you always have to use this. Is there maybe another thing I can help you with? And you always have to use that at the end when you think you handled the first issue or maybe the main issue.

I'll add something, Joseph. It's professional English, right? So, we're being polite. So it's common to use words like May, Would, Could. Like, how may I help you? What can I do for you? We use a lot of these words because it sounds more polite. So, really practicing with this polite language is important when working in any type of customer service. But yeah, go ahead. Another phrase I usually use.

Every time, it's real important to rephrase what the customer just said. As I am understanding correctly, you said you had some problem with your credit card. You checked your statement and you found a charge on it you did not recognize at all. Is that correct or is that right? You are also generating rapport here because you are making the customer feel like you are paying attention to what they are saying, and you do care about what they're talking about during the conversation, and it's really, really important. The soft skill you are always gonna hear during training or even when you start working on operations is you need to have active listening.

14:10 Active Listening and Rapport Building

So active listening is basically paying attention. Focus and making sure you are understanding what they mean by rephrasing what they are saying or what they mean. In that way, you will be able to provide a better help, a better resolution, or direct solution to whatever issue they may be going through. Ooh, that's such a big tip there, Joseph. Right? And an important soft skill. Active listening, and as you said, repeating back is one of the best ways, whether it's customer service or just having conversations with people.

When you repeat back to them, it shows them that you're really listening and you understand what they're saying, and that builds that rapport that keeps that good relationship. And you can reduce, maybe any kind of confusion or negative energy, because they feel heard. So yeah, that's really important.

15:27 Conclusion and Additional Resources

Joseph, thank you for those great tips and common vocabulary that you use at work. Guys, if you want more tips about vocabulary, skills you need for call centers, preparing for interviews, and maybe where you can find call center jobs, I'm gonna leave in the description a link for you, and you can check out all that information to study and prepare for call center jobs.

Thank you for being with us, everyone, and enjoy the rest of your day and see you in the next podcast episode. Bye.

Call Center English Study Guide

NOTE: Every call center is different, but the English skills you need are very similar — clear pronunciation, polite language, and active listening.

📝 Top Tips for Call Center Interviews

• Be prepared for common questions like: Tell me about yourself or Why do you want this job?

• Keep your answers clear and focused on helping people.

• Show respect in your answers — customer service is about treating others how you’d like to be treated.

• Don’t worry — interviews are usually simple conversations to test your English.

🎧 Call Center Training Insights

• Training teaches you how to be polite and professional with customers.

• Always greet customers warmly: Good morning, welcome to customer service. My name is __.

• Build rapport — a good relationship of trust and positivity.

• Keep a “can-do” attitude: I understand how you feel, but I am here to help you.

📞 Essential Call Center Phrases

• How may I assist you today? (more polite than How can I help you?)

• Let’s go ahead and pull up your account.

• Would you mind spelling your full name/email address? (A as in Apple, B as in Boy…)

• Is there anything else I can help you with today?

• Use polite modal verbs: may, would, could to sound professional.

🗣️ Active Listening and Rapport

• Rephrase what the customer said: So, if I understand correctly…

• This shows you’re paying attention and builds trust.

• Active listening = focus, repeat, and confirm details to avoid misunderstandings.

• Good rapport reduces stress and keeps the conversation positive.

💡 Key Vocabulary

• Rapport = relationship of trust and positivity.

• Fee = a payment charge.

• Can-do attitude = showing willingness and positivity.

• Active listening = focusing carefully and repeating back what you heard.

💬 Reflection Questions

Practice your writing or speaking skills by answering these:

• What would you say if an interviewer asked, Why do you want to work in a call center?

• Which polite phrase from the study guide do you want to practice first?

• Have you ever had a customer service call with bad rapport? How did it feel?

• What do you think is the hardest part of speaking English on the phone?

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Book your free consultation now 👉http://peachteachenglish.com/free-consultation

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📘 Want More Tips to Get an English Call Center Job?

Check out the full blog post for more advice on how to get call center jobs, improve your English skills, and grow your professional vocabulary:
👉 https://peachteachenglish.com/post/call-center-english