Meet your teacher: English for Customer Service Course

We recently launched the English for Customer Service Course. It is a very important course for our English School since there are a lot of job opportunities in customer service especially if you know more than one language.

In this blog post, you will meet the amazing teacher who recorded this course. I had the pleasure of being his course director and being part of the course in a role play. 🙂

Besides recording this course, César has done an outstanding job in the English School, coordinating our weekly events.

Where were you born?

I was born in Bogotá, Colombia.

Where have you traveled or lived?

I have always lived in Colombia. I first traveled abroad in 2018 to visit my partner’s family in Brazil, I visited a few States and practiced my Portuguese.

I also joined a cruise company to work as an art dealer by the end of 2019 and worked for about 4 months on board. This experience gave me the opportunity to visit around 15 countries.

What is your favorite place in the world?

Even though I like living here in Bogotá, I love visiting Brazil when I am on vacation, I am really fascinated by everything I see there. I like their cuisine, music, sights, people and culture.

What languages do you speak and how did you learn them?

Spanish is my mother tongue, I also speak English and Portuguese. I learned English after I left school at an international English institute in Bogotá.

I studied for around a year and a half and then the company hired me to work with them, I kept studying and my English increasingly got better.

I learned Portuguese mostly because of my partner. She’s Brazilian and we’ve been together since 2017.

I can get by in the language and get my ideas across. However, I’d like to speak Portuguese as well as I speak Spanish or English, so I’m currently studying.

How has speaking different languages helped you?

Speaking English has truly changed my life. It has given me the chance to work abroad, visit English speaking countries without being afraid of not communicating effectively, make new friends around the world, discover new cultures and experiences and of course make more money.

Portuguese has helped me understand Brazil’s culture better, which I love, and I can also communicate with my girlfriend’s family.

When you were little, what would you say you wanted to be?

I think we want to be many things when we are little, but I think I pictured myself many times as a businessman, I like sales and marketing. However, after I started to learn English, I realized it does really change your life and I knew I wanted to help others learn as well.

I am passionate about teaching and I am grateful I discovered this passion at an early age.

How long have you been a teacher and what is your favorite thing about being a teacher?

I have been a teacher since 2015 and I have to say that seeing your students succeed and change their lives is my favorite thing about being a teacher.

It is very fulfilling and rewarding when they come to you to say “thank you” because they are reaching their goals.

Tell us about your course and how was your experience recording courses in Platzi?

The English for Customer service course has been designed for anyone who wants to improve soft skills such as rapport building, patience, active listening and attentiveness, time management, persuasion and more.

This course is useful not only for the people who work in the customer service field but also anyone who is interested in becoming a better professional since we all work with people and developing these soft skills is essential nowadays.

I really enjoyed recording every class of this course. I had a great team who supported and guided me all the time during the process. It was a whole new experience so I learned many things from the very first day.

To close this interview I would like for you to share with our students What are your top 3 tips to improve English speaking skills.

• Be patient: Speaking English or any language takes discipline, practice and time.
• It’s okay to make mistakes: The more mistakes you make, the more you learn. Enjoy the process.
• Be curious: Listen and pay attention to the way other people speak, listen to yourself, practice with apps and look for the space to practice with others.

Do you have any questions for César? Leave them in the comments section below.

Thank you for reading! 💚