IELTS General Training Reading Test 8: Free, with Answers

Welcome to Brightway Energy's customer service team. Your first four weeks will be an induction period, during which you will learn about our products, our systems and the way we work.

Week 1: classroom training

You will spend your first week in our training centre with other new advisers. Sessions cover our energy tariffs, the way in which customers' bills are calculated and the main features of our customer database. Please bring photo identification on your first day so that you can be issued with a security pass.

Week 2: practice calls

In your second week, you will practise handling calls in role-plays, with trainers playing the part of customers. Some of these customers will be confused, some will be in a hurry and some will be angry, so that you are prepared for the range of situations you are likely to meet. You will not speak to real customers during this week.

Weeks 3 and 4: taking calls

From week three, you will begin taking calls yourself, with a team leader available to help if you need it. At first, you will deal only with simple enquiries, such as changes of address and meter readings. Calls about complaints or payment difficulties will be transferred to more experienced colleagues until you have completed further training.

Quality checks

A selection of your calls will be recorded and reviewed by your team leader each week. You will receive feedback on how well you followed our procedures and on your tone of voice, which is just as important as giving accurate information.

Dress and equipment

There is no uniform, but staff are expected to dress smartly. Each adviser is given a personal headset, which should be cleaned regularly with the wipes provided and must not be lent to colleagues.

Hours and breaks

Advisers work shifts between 8 am and 8 pm, Monday to Saturday. During your induction, however, you will work from 9 am to 5 pm. You are entitled to a 45-minute lunch break and two 10-minute screen breaks each day.

At the end of the induction

At the end of week four, you will have a review meeting with your team leader to discuss your progress. If you need more time to reach the required standard, your induction may be extended by up to two weeks.

We aim to resolve every complaint quickly and fairly. Complaints are dealt with in three stages, and customers should be told at each stage what will happen next.

Stage 1

Most complaints can be resolved by the adviser who takes the call. Advisers can correct billing errors, arrange a visit from an engineer or offer a goodwill payment of up to £30. If the customer is satisfied, the complaint is closed and a confirmation email is sent.

Stage 2

If the customer is not satisfied, or if the complaint is more complicated, it is passed to the complaints team. A named case handler will contact the customer within two working days and will aim to resolve the matter within ten working days. Case handlers can authorise payments of up to £250.

Stage 3

If the customer remains unhappy, they can ask for the complaint to be reviewed by a senior manager, who will reply in writing within twenty working days. This is the company's final response.

After the final response

If the customer is still not satisfied, or if eight weeks have passed since the complaint was first made, they can take it to the Energy Ombudsman, an independent body that settles disputes between customers and energy companies free of charge. The company must accept the Ombudsman's decision.

Customers who need extra help

If a customer is elderly, disabled or in financial difficulty, make a note on their account so that colleagues are aware of their situation. Such customers may need additional support, for example more time to pay a bill or letters printed in large type. Complaints received by letter or email are acknowledged within two working days and are then handled in exactly the same way as those made by phone.

Recording complaints

Every complaint must be logged on the customer database, even if it is resolved immediately. This allows us to identify common problems and to report complaint figures to the industry regulator.

AIn 1789, a ship called the Adventure ran aground in a storm at the mouth of the River Tyne in north-east England. The wreck lay only a short distance from the shore, and a large crowd gathered to watch, but the sea was so violent that no boat could reach it. One by one, the exhausted crew lost their grip on the rigging and fell into the waves, while the people on the beach looked on, powerless to help. The tragedy shocked the local community, and a committee of gentlemen from the nearby town of South Shields responded by offering a reward for the design of a boat that could carry out rescues in such conditions.

BTwo of the designs that were submitted have become famous. William Wouldhave, a former house painter who worked as a parish clerk, produced a tin model of a boat that was to be built of copper and kept afloat by cork, so that it could not capsize. The committee disliked the idea of a copper boat, although it gave him a guinea for his trouble. Henry Greathead, a local boatbuilder, was more fortunate. Although his own design was rejected, he was employed to build a boat to a plan drawn up by the committee, and at his suggestion it was given a curved keel, which made it easier to steer. Lined with cork and rowed by ten men, the boat was first tested in January 1790. Greathead later persuaded parliament that he had invented the lifeboat and was awarded £1,200, although his claim was disputed then and has been ever since. Wouldhave's gravestone, by contrast, describes him as the 'Inventor of that invaluable blessing to mankind the Lifeboat'.

CFor the next thirty years, lifeboats were provided by local committees, and many parts of the coast had none at all. The man who set out to change this was William Hillary, who lived on the Isle of Man and had witnessed a series of shipwrecks there. He published an appeal to the British nation for a national organisation to save lives at sea. The Admiralty showed little interest, but with the help of a merchant and a member of parliament, Hillary gained the support of influential figures, including the king. At a public meeting in London in March 1824, the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was founded, and within weeks the word 'Royal' had been added to its name. Hillary practised what he preached: in 1830, at the age of sixty, he commanded the Douglas lifeboat during the rescue of the 22 crew of the St George, which had struck a rock at the entrance to the harbour, and although he was washed overboard, every member of the ship's crew was saved. In its first year, it raised nearly £10,000, but enthusiasm soon faded, and by 1850 its annual income had fallen to just £354.

DIt was during these difficult years that the most celebrated rescue of the century took place, although no lifeboat was involved. Early on 7 September 1838, Grace Darling, the 22-year-old daughter of the keeper of the Longstone lighthouse in the Farne Islands, saw the wreck of the steamship Forfarshire on a nearby rock. Judging that the sea was too rough for the lifeboat to put out from the mainland, she and her father rowed nearly a mile to the rock in a small open boat. While Grace held the boat steady, her father helped five survivors aboard, and he later returned with some of the rescued men to collect four more. Grace became a national heroine almost overnight. Donations poured in, including £50 from Queen Victoria, and both she and her father were awarded silver medals by the institution.

EIn the 1850s, the institution was transformed. A new secretary, Richard Lewis, spent the next thirty-three years travelling the country to raise money, and by 1882 annual income had risen to more than £43,000. Experienced naval officers replaced many of the dukes and archbishops on the committee, and one of them, Captain John Ross Ward, introduced lifejackets made of cork for the volunteer crews. A competition for an improved lifeboat attracted 280 entries, and in 1854 the organisation adopted the name by which it is still known: the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. For some years it accepted an annual subsidy from the government, but it gave this up in 1869 and has relied on voluntary donations ever since. When 27 lifeboat crew from Southport and St Annes were lost in a single night in 1886, Charles Macara, a member of a local lifeboat committee, organised the first 'Lifeboat Day' in Manchester, at which lifeboats were paraded through the streets and more than £5,000 was collected.

FMotor lifeboats began to replace oars and sails in the early twentieth century, and modern lifeboats are equipped with radar and satellite navigation. Yet the principles on which the service was founded have hardly changed. It is still a charity, and the great majority of its crews are unpaid volunteers. In 2024, it had more than 8,800 volunteers and fewer than 3,000 paid staff, and its lifeboats continue to answer calls for help at any hour and in any weather.