Practise the support conversation before the customer call.

Practise identity checks on account calls: asking for the right identifiers before sharing anything, declining a well-meaning relative kindly, and holding the line with a caller who can't pass checks while still offering a way forward. Fictional policy throughout; practice, not data-protection advice.

• Easy Amara — account holder, cooperative
• Medium Gareth — son calling about his mother's account, well-meaning
• Hard Mr Dalby — caller who cannot pass checks, impatient

Practise explaining bills in everyday words: a part-month tariff change, an estimated bill and a disputed late fee. You'll use the supplied dates and figures, read numbers back, call an estimate an estimate and apply goodwill within your limit. Fictional tariffs and policies; not financial advice.

• Easy Helen — customer, polite but puzzled by bill
• Medium Tomasz — customer, suspicious of an estimated meter bill
• Hard Marcus — long-standing energy customer, indignant about late fee

Practise taking ownership of order problems: refunding a late delivery fee, handling a parcel marked delivered but missing, and explaining a replacement-first route for a faulty item without arguing about the law. Fictional retailer policy; not legal advice.

• Easy Raj — customer, late next-day delivery query
• Medium Chloe — customer, parcel marked delivered but not received
• Hard Dennis — customer, faulty lamp after seven weeks

Practise a clear, reasoned no that still offers what you genuinely can: a non-refundable course fee, a same-day visit that isn't available, and a credit someone says was promised. Three fictional organisations with supplied policies and honest timescales.

• Easy Priya — customer, requesting refund on non-refundable course
• Medium Ken — customer, demanding same-day water engineer
• Hard Beverley — customer, asserting disputed agent credit promise

Practise the stages of a complaint: recognising dissatisfaction when nobody says the word complaint, giving an honest status update on a stage 1 case, and staying composed when a resident mentions the ombudsman. A fictional procedure modelled on published complaint codes; practice only.

• Easy Sunita — resident, repair delay dissatisfaction
• Medium Omar — resident, chasing stage-1 damp complaint
• Hard Brian — resident, escalating stage-2 complaint with ombudsman

Practise calming heated calls by naming the real grievance, owning errors and acting with a date, and ending a rude call correctly after one clear warning. Level 3 includes personal insults aimed at you; ending the call under the policy counts as success.

• Easy Yvonne — customer, repeat billing dispute de-escalation
• Medium Denise — customer, duplicate charge overdraft distress
• Hard Lee — caller, abusive over missed engineer appointment

Practise cancellation calls that respect the customer's decision: a quick, clean cancellation, one honest retention offer followed by a graceful goodbye, and a refund after an unwanted renewal. Fictional offers and terms; practice, not legal advice.

• Easy Jess — subscriber, decided, cancelling meal-kit
• Medium Geoffrey — out-of-contract customer, leaving for cheaper rival
• Hard Nadia — subscriber, disputing audiobook auto-renewal

Practise outage calls: confirming a known fault without guessing a fix time, explaining automatic compensation accurately, and separating what support can do now from what another team decides later. Fictional schemes and terms; practice only.

• Easy Aisha — customer, reporting local broadband outage
• Medium Priya — remote worker, three-day broadband fault compensation
• Hard Dan — IT manager, B2B SaaS platform outage incident

Practise the call-backs you promised: opening clearly, leading with the news whether it's good or bad, offering the supplied choices on a delay, and asking whether a complaint is resolved before closing it. All three calls are outbound; fictional outcomes only.

• Easy Mrs Achebe — customer, damaged vase refund callback
• Medium Hamid — customer, coffee machine dispatch delay callback
• Hard Catherine — customer, stage-1 housing complaint review callback

Practise slowing down for customers who need it: a recently bereaved caller, a customer with hearing loss, and a caller in arrears who hints at crisis. You'll rehearse pace, consent and a clear handover, not clinical judgement. Level 3 involves a caller who may be at risk; this is practice, not safeguarding or mental-health training.

• Easy Margaret — recently bereaved, utility account hold
• Medium Frank — hard of hearing, energy tariff change explanation
• Hard Stephen — customer in arrears, distress and safeguarding handover