Dealing with Complaints Activities, Worksheets & Games
Customer Complaints
Business English Dealing with Complaints Activity - Vocabulary, Reading, Listening and Speaking: Gap-fill, Ordering, Role-play, Freer Practice - Pair Work
In this dealing with complaints activity, students practice language for dealing with customer complaints and role-play complaint dialogues. First, students...
Dealing with Customer Complaints
Business English Dealing with Complaints Worksheet - Reading and Writing Exercises: Gap-fill, Error Correction, Ordering - Speaking Activity: Role-Play - Pair Work
Here is a useful customer complaints worksheet to help students learn how to deal with customer complaints. First, in pairs, students discuss questions...
Find Someone Who Can...
Business English Dealing with Complaints Activity - Speaking: Asking and Answering Questions, Controlled and Freer Practice
In this free 'Find Someone Who' activity on dealing with complaints, students ask and answer questions about customer service language and complaint‑handling phrases. To begin, students review the...
From Complaint to Resolution
Business English Dealing with Complaints Activity - Speaking: Role-Play, Asking and Answering Questions, Form Completion, Freer Practice - Pair Work
In this complaints‑handling activity, students practice collecting and confirming customer details on a call, clarifying the issue, reading back key information, and...
The Complaint Clinic
Business English Dealing with Complaints Game - Speaking: Impromptu Speech, Freer Practice - Group Work
In this productive complaint-handling board game, students give 30-second impromptu responses to realistic customer complaints while using professional phrases and techniques. In groups, students...
Dealing with Customer Complaints
Dealing with customer complaints involves acknowledging a concern, establishing what happened and explaining an appropriate next step. Students need language that combines a respectful tone with accurate questions and clear information, without promising an outcome they cannot confirm.
This page contains five B2 resources, including a worksheet, role-play and speaking activities, and a board game, with one free speaking activity.
The table shows useful communication functions with hypothetical examples that can be adapted to the assigned customer service role.
| Communication function | Purpose | Example language |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledge the concern | Show that the customer's difficulty has been heard. | 'I understand that the delay has disrupted your plans.' |
| Express regret | Respond respectfully to the inconvenience. | 'I'm sorry for the inconvenience.' |
| Clarify the issue | Find out what happened before deciding how to respond. | 'Could you tell me when you first noticed the problem?' |
| Confirm the information | Check that the details have been understood correctly. | 'Just to confirm, you received the wrong item yesterday. Is that right?' |
| Explain the next step | State an action that is within the representative's role. | 'I'll check the order details and explain the available options.' |
| Clarify follow-up | Explain when and how the customer can expect further information. | 'I can update you by email tomorrow, even if the review is still ongoing.' |
How to Respond to Customer Complaints
Acknowledge before investigating: Give the customer an opportunity to explain the concern, then acknowledge its impact. Follow with focused questions rather than immediately defending the company or guessing the cause.
Check details before proposing action: Ask for information relevant to the issue and read back the key points. In classroom role-plays, use the supplied scenario details so students can concentrate on accurate questions and confirmation language.
Separate an update from a guaranteed resolution: Explain what can be done next within the assigned role. Offer a time frame only when the scenario supports it, and distinguish a promised progress update from a promise that the problem will be solved.
3-Step Framework for Teaching Complaint Handling
This B2 sequence uses a dialogue-building activity followed by a complaint-call role-play. The final two steps develop different stages of the call activity.
1. Build a Coherent Complaint Dialogue: Students complete complaint-handling sentences with supplied words, then work in pairs to order a customer-service dialogue by reading its lines to each other. They use a scenario to role-play a similar conversation. This connects individual expressions with the flow of an exchange.
2. Gather and Confirm the Details: One student acts as the customer while the representative asks polite questions and completes a complaint form. At the end of the information-gathering stage, the representative reads back key details for confirmation. This gives the language a concrete purpose: establishing an accurate account of the issue.
3. Explain Next Steps and Review: The representative outlines actions, gives a general time frame and closes the call politely. Students swap roles for a second case, then compare their completed forms for missing details. Use this review to discuss whether each response connected the customer's issue with an understandable next step.
Common Mistakes with Complaint-Handling Language
Keeping direct-question word order in an indirect question: After 'Could you tell me', use subject-verb order in the embedded question. Incorrect: 'Could you tell me when did the problem start?' Correct: 'Could you tell me when the problem started?'
Promising a result before checking: A reassuring response should still reflect what the representative knows and can do. Unsupported promise: 'Your replacement will definitely arrive tomorrow.' Appropriate when delivery is unconfirmed: 'I'll check when a replacement can be delivered and confirm the date with you.'
Common Questions About Teaching Complaint Handling
What worksheet helps teach handling customer complaints?
The worksheet Dealing with Customer Complaints introduces three steps for handling complaints through vocabulary work, sentence correction and a telephone dialogue. Students then take turns role-playing the customer and service agent using the language and steps. Class feedback focuses on how well each pair applied those steps in their conversation.
What game helps students practice responding to complaints?
The board game The Complaint Clinic asks students to respond to customer complaints for thirty seconds while acting as company representatives. They earn points for distinct complaint-handling techniques used appropriately. The timed turns give students practice producing responses spontaneously, while the response card provides techniques they can draw on as they speak.
What free activity helps students practice customer service language?
The activity Find Someone Who Can... has students ask classmates whether they can perform customer service tasks, such as offering help politely. Students who answer yes provide an example phrase, which their classmate records with their name. Sharing the collected phrases afterwards gives the class examples of language for handling complaints.
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