Do Accents Of Call Center Agents Affect Business?

Do you remember the last time you called a company’s customer service? Do you remember what happened during that time? How was your experience? Do you remember the person you spoke with? Have you been able to get your message across? Was the person the other end helpful? Or were you only even more frustrated because you just did not quite understand what the other person was trying to tell you?

Each person has his (or her) stories when it comes to dealing with company representatives and customer service agents. The Philippine BPO industry is quite a huge one, and imagine all those companies and the number of agents that are working there. So each time you call a company, your chances of getting the same agent is quite slim. With that, each person can say that the experience was quite happy because he (or she) got what they wanted. On the other hand, you can probably listen for hours on end about how agents have messed up transactions and how they became the characters in customer service horror stories.

One of the main reasons why calls can be too stressful for customers is when the person handling the call would be someone with a different accent than what they are used to. This is quite true especially during the early years of the Philippine contact center industry. Most companies did not know how to outsource yet.

Those who did outsource had problems when their customers started calling and they were unsure about who they were speaking with as the accent was a little bit different than what they were accustomed to hearing each day. That made them be distracted from what they were supposed to be calling in about.
With that, the Philippines contact center industry continued to improve and develop. It has become a power to reckon with when it comes to this part of the globe. In fact, this is all because the industry has been training their call center agents when it comes to the proper accent. Some accounts ask for their agents to really have the American accent. There are others that do not put much emphasis on that as long as customers are able to understand what they are saying. It can be really understandable if accents really do matter when it comes to contact centers and other transactions because we are talking about voice calls here. With the tons of various noises coming in, an unfamiliar accent may cause you to strain to really understand what the other person is saying. In the end, a person can be frustrated and no solution be given to whatever issue may have prompted that customer to call.

What are accents really?

In the field of sociolinguistics, the accent is actually how people pronounce words. It can depend on a variety of factors. It can be the way that particular individual speaks. It can also be because of the place where the individual has grown up. For others, it can be the country where the person is. Another factor could be the social class that a person may belong in. It can also be some influence that a person may have had when it comes to language. There are a lot of factors though mostly it is about location and language. Most people have a certain accent that is different from others especially when it comes to accents per country. There are a few people who can easily identify from where a person is from just by simply listening to that particular person’s accent.

In the BPO industry in the Philippines, you would be able to find a variety of accents being used by various agents who handle calls although most of them have a very neutral accent that most business owners find interesting and easy to understand. This is perhaps one of the top reasons why the Philippines has been quite the place to go to if you are looking for companies to outsource to especially when it comes to providing customer support via voice calls.

Basically, most Filipinos really have a neutral accent and that is widely being used. However, there are, again, factors that affect that and the list includes the region that they came from and perhaps if they really spoke the language during their early years. There are some regions that have really heavy dialects that when they use English, the dialect is also taken there. Of course, that does not apply to all people. There are always exceptions. In fact, there are a lot of Filipinos who do speak as if they have lived in the United States for a really long time. There are a lot of kids nowadays who have spent a huge portion of their time watching TV, and that is where they get their accents from. As they say, children’s hearing is very sensitive. The best time for you to teach them a good accent would be from birth until seven years old. They easily pick up very slight changes in accent.

The popularity of the United States accent (or the American accent)

Go to an inbound call center. Listen to how agents are actually taking their calls. Listen to their accents. You would mostly find them speaking in the American accent. This is primarily because the United States and its American accent is what most companies are looking for these days. This has been quite true especially during the early years of contact centers. This company is one of the top BPO companies in the country, can attest to that as they have been working with quite a number of businesses and they are most likely looking for those who have the American accent. Of course, the numbers are slowly dwindling as of present as the world has slowly embraced the fact that there are a lot of contact centers situated abroad and not necessarily are located in the United States. People have slowly embraced the fact that those answering the hotlines may be some person halfway across the globe.

The truth about the American accent and its popularity is that it is the most heard accent all around the world. With more American shows being played in cities around the globe and more movies, and more movie stars speaking with such an accent, the whole world definitely has become quite familiar with it. They know easily what people are saying and they can easily understand the words. Thanks to popular culture and media, our ears have been Americanized.

Add to that the fact that most of the businesses that look to outsource are those who are in the United States. When it comes to call center hiring, the majority of businesses hail from this country and that is why they are looking for call center agents who have their accent. This is so they can claim that their customer service staff is right within the confines of their physical address and not really outsourced halfway around the globe. But the truth is, there are tons of contact centers that actually started out as a home based call center and eventually grew to become huge companies that we currently know of.

If there were, perhaps, more businesses in the United Kingdom or in Australia that were outsourcing their customer service tasks, then the chances of contact centers training their agents to speak with a British accent would be far greater and the American accent would not be making quite a splash each and every time. In a way, we can say that it is all about the demand and the world right now demands the American accent.

The accent battle: Philippines versus India

In the call center industry, there are two countries that are competing. These two are the Philippines and India. You would find a great amount of businesses here that offer outsourcing. In the past years, India seemed to be gaining over the Philippines as it offers lower rates. Recently, however, the Philippines has shown that it can do better than that because it has a more neutral accent as compared to that of the agents in India.

Despite having call center training for all its agents, one cannot easily take out any deep accents that have become embedded in how one speaks. India has such a problem because of its language and the fact that it has become a colony of the British once upon a time. Put the two together and you get a different accent that can be quite difficult to understand. In a Philippine call center, on the other hand, you would find a whole lot of agents who can perfectly speak English without a really heavy accent. In fact, those who have heard Filipinos and how they handle the language say that these people have a neutral accent and it works for most companies.

Filipinos are not very difficult to train when it comes to speaking the English language. This is because the government and its educational system has English as part of their curriculum and you would find this subject as early as pre-school. It continues on until they finish their studies. That is why if you go around Asia and talk to people, you would find that Filipinos can easily understand the language although not everyone can speak it well. Those who do usually are the ones who watch a lot of English movies and also have had years of speaking it, even when they are just in school.

To help agents be even more fluent with the language, a call center Philippines would give their new hires training. They would do a lot of speaking and a lot of accent training to help take out any heavy accents that they may have acquired during their early years and also be able to train them to speak the English language well.

So how do you learn to speak English with a neutral accent?

The call center industry invests a lot in good trainers or coaches to help their agents. It does not matter if it is an outbound call center or an inbound call center. As long as you would be speaking with clients or with customers, accent training is a requirement. This is quite understandable as in this industry, it is all about being able to communicate well. How can one communicate well if the other person has a hard time grasping the message that you are sending their way?

Trainers help agents through a variety of exercises. They also share tips on how agents can improve the way they speak the language.

• Be observant at how Americans speak. See how they use their mouth and their tongue to be able to say what they need to say. Practice how they do it and you would be able to imitate them somehow.
• If you can invest in a CD that teaches you how to speak the language, go ahead and get that. Listen to it and listen to it very carefully. If you can listen to it over and over again, go ahead and do so. You would be able to get the rhythm of how they speak and that should help you be better.
• Do not hurry up when speaking English. There is no rush to get the message out. Observe native American speakers and you would see just how they put some thought into what they say and they do not really have to rush through everything. Only rappers do that. English is a language that does not require you to speak in a quick manner.
• Practice. Practice. Practice. A lot of people know the theories but they forget to put that into application. It is something that you should learn by doing. If you do not, then you can only assume that you know the theory behind it but you have not really mastered the application. If you can speak with someone who knows the American accent well, go ahead and start a conversation with him (or her).

Truth be told: Accent does matter in contact center agents.

Order Taking Philippines provides businesses with call center agents that have Western accent. For more information, contact us.