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'Language' not the key for call center training

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Language is not the most important element of training that is to be given to a call center employee. Rather, the delivery of the sentences is what will make the difference to the customer at the other end of the line, according to David Naylor, Founding partner of Budd UK, a firm offering consulting services. He was speaking on Linguistics and Culture in a Contact Center Management seminar held by Limebridge in Bangalore on November 11.



"Dialect is one of the most important aspects of speech which constitutes the three elements of vocabulary, syntax and accent. Understanding dialect is equally, if not more important, as accent neutralization among call center agents," said Naylor.



According to him, most difficulties in comprehending a customer on a phone line can boil down to a misunderstanding of the dialect being spoken. He added that in his visits to call centers in India he had found that many of the agents do not listen carefully and speak too fast.



While emphasizing that call center agents have to be given more training in that area, Naylor pointed out that according to a study conducted by Morrabian, the acceptance of a message conveyed over the phone depended almost 84 percent on the delivery rather than words per se. Here delivery comprises of courteousness, rapport, empathy tuning into values and putting 'a smile in the voice'.



He added, "Language is a skill but it does not exist in a vacuum. It is supplanted and added to by various other factors higher up in the skill level including knowledge on contextual understanding pertinent to the client's location, understanding the general aspects of the country and knowing the behavioral signs that people from different countries have as a result of their culture."



He urged call centers to create a realistic recruitment process keeping in mind the quality they are looking out for, invest in training and exchange programs between themselves and the client along with continuous monitoring.





(CNS)

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