• Explain a situation where you have built a relationship with a customer.

Situation

I’ve been a teacher in China for nearly 2 years at a foreign language university. At the university I’ve developed a reputation for being responsible, hard working and a relatively good teacher among the foreign teaching staff, having achieved the aims that the department set out for me.

This being China, learning English is a big deal, and parents like their children to start learning early, so they often seek private schools or tutors to give their children an advantage. Sometimes the department of English, where I work, get approached to ask for such tutors, and because I’ve developed this reputation of being responsible and hard working, I was the first to be asked if I wanted to take on some tutoring work of 6x 6 year old kids.

I saw this as a good opportunity to learn how to teach and deal with children, and experience is always a good thing, regardless of being paid for it or not.

Task

On our first meeting I was to teach their children for 2 hours to see how it went, and then discuss terms. So the task was to prepare a lesson suitable for 6 year old children, in an area where I have almost no experience, and if it was successful, then knowing what the market rate was for such a teacher, and what they’d be expecting to pay for my time.

Action

In order to prepare I spoke to a number of other Expat teachers that I know, who had had experience teaching children before. They gave me some advice about games and books to look into. I researched teaching English to young learners on the internet and I went to the local book shop to scope what books are available and the sort of exercises they had in them. I found enough to plan a 2 hour lesson, and have a fair understanding of what sorts of things would work and wouldn’t work, and a few suggestions of what the future lessons for their children could entail.

Result

The result was that I did my lesson and had a talk with the parents. With the best interests of the children at heart, I felt that 2 hours was two long for the children to concentrate, and that the 6 children had distracted each other, so maybe they could be split up.

The parents agreed and said that they were happy their children had bonded with me and wanted to proceed. We discussed their thoughts for future lessons and the pay. They gave me the market rate, even though I was inexperienced, because I had shown that I was capable, and able to adapt to their needs. And we’ve had a fruitful relationship in the months since.