I’m not very good when it comes to speaking french, I can ask where the toilet is and things like that but you want me to hold a proper conversation and I go to pot.
I was on my own in Customer Service today at lunchtime and the phone rang. It was the normal helpdesk line so I picked the phone up without it even crossing my mind at how stupid I was about to look.
The customer said hello in French and then started off on one. Our first amount of conversation was trying to decide what language we would speak seeing as he didn’t speak English or Italian and I don’t speak French or Portugese.
Good start! I figure that as long as he speaks slowly I can guess the words and try and form a conversation via Google Translate. I kept asking him to speak slower but that didn’t work so then I tried to explain that my colleague was at lunch – again Key Stage 3 French doesn’t prepare you for this lol.
So somehow in my rubbish franglais we work out that the customer needs to call back in an hour when my one of my french speaking colleagues should be back in the room adn able to take the call. Well I hope he does call back and that my rubbish attempt has no way put a blemish on our team. Somehow it could have been better thats for sure! I think French Customer Service lessons is the way forward! Then we’ll think about German too.
