One of my friends asked me to help him and my response was:
How can I help you?
But he laughed and said you mean:
How can I be of service
What is the difference?
Learn English – How to be of service vs How to help you
sentence-meaningsentence-usage
sentence-meaningsentence-usage
One of my friends asked me to help him and my response was:
How can I help you?
But he laughed and said you mean:
How can I be of service
What is the difference?
Best Answer
One possible explanation about his joke could relate to sales technique and the use of biased questions. If you were a sales person in a shop, you would be expected to walk up to customers and offer to help. If you say:
This is not a biased question: the customer can answer yes or no. If, instead, you ask
this is a biased question: you are assuming that you can help, and it's difficult for the customer to refuse. This question is simply a polite biased question: you could go to the next level by asking a very obsequious biased question:
When your friend asked you to help, your response was perfectly appropriate because you definitely know that your friend wants your help. It is, however, a stock phrase which sounds like a sales pitch, and your friend may have been alluding to the "sales pitch" angle by suggesting that you should go to the next level.
If somebody asked me to help them, I would reply slightly less formally and I would avoid potentially confusing stock phrases, by saying: