If you were to outsource your calls to other countries than your own, one reality the business has to face is to deal with accent, pronunciation, grammar and comprehension of the language.
On the account of saturation and harsh competition, the level of a competent labor pool specifically on mastering the language has now dropped. But, the demand is still great and you need to put on your thinking hat to address the issue.
Training is now critical to meet this demand.
It usually takes about two weeks to get new hires reach an acceptable level of English proficiency. Some centers have resulted to longer training time, but this has affected the bottom line. "Near hire" training might be the answer, but it is dependent on how robust it is and again, longer time to train.
One thing that works would be to change the methodology of how you train the language. It is not about accent anymore (considering you shouldn’t even consider hiring them in the first place). It’s not even about grammar. It is how the training is designed. It is how it is facilitated. It is how you pay attention to different learning styles.
Focus on confidence and comprehension. It doesn’t matter whether the person has an accent, but how the agents understand the customer. Let’s not lose focus that we are serving our customers. Train our agents with them in mind taking into consideration the situation at hand, then you will not fail.
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