30/03/2017
WHY WE NEED ACCENT TRAINING : While the several language backgrounds that non-native speakers of English bring with them influence the way they speak in interesting ways and even make it kind of cute sometimes, it is essential to have proper training to correct errors that can cause confusion, when it comes to using English for business communication. As India came into the IT era and started doing huge business with the West, it became essential to impart accent training to increase the efficiency of business interaction, especially over the phone. Time is money and thus the longer it takes for a customer service representative to successfully understand customer issues and provide the necessary service, the higher the cost of operations. Bangalore became one of the biggest centres for BPO and our large technically skilled population who could also speak English, as opposed to maybe the Chinese, brought in a ton of jobs. This opportunity allowed new graduates and several undergraduates to get jobs that paid half way decent wages, with little or no experience. We however took this for granted, I hate to say, and quality was not maintained and deteriorated over time, leading to companies taking their service centres elsewhere, like the Philippines for example. This left us with a lot of non-voice support jobs and naturally, the demand for such training also fell. However, in the interest of maybe bringing back some of these jobs, which is very essential to our large, young and growing population, this sort of training needs to make a comeback. In addition to people working in the BPO industry, even experienced individuals in other areas that require international interaction over the phone or on site, would do themselves good being prepared with better language skills. Language being something that improves with habitual usage, takes time to perfect and it will pay off to start working on it before the need arises. The common notion is that accent training will change a person's accent to either a British or American one and thus we don't need it if there isn't a specific job requirement for it and we can generally be understood. That is however only partially true. Accent training can also be used to just neutralize an individual's speech by helping them iron out their mother tongue influence and the pronunciation errors that come with it. It also helps in improving a person's tone to a more confident one, by correcting their intonation and adding better voice modulation. All said, I have enjoyed the benefits of having these in place, and often been complimented on it, not to mention that I got my first job as an accent trainer based only on this skill which I acquired mainly from TV. Formal training helps you acquire it faster and reduces the possibility of errors being held onto for years. Schools have now started using phonetics to teach children English, which is a great step forward.
