Hi Rajeshwar Shankar,

welcome to CCV. We at Diallog developed our own voice metrics for selection of candidates for voice based call centres.

The metric is devised on 3 tests:

1.Conversation over phone
2.reading test
3.Normal conversation.

In the first test we can find out the tone,pitch and intonation. Any voice defects like accent, unnecessary long pauses, wrong pronunciation, lisp, chewing of words, raspiness can be identified.

In second test pronunciation, pace and clarity can be found out

In normal conversation you can gauge grammatical errors and fluency can be identified.

Vedula

Vedula, interesting post.

You mention assessing potential candidates on the quality of their speech, e.g. on intonation, pronunciation, etc. I was just curious - is your call centre marketing itself as an English speaking (or some other non-Indian Language) call centre?

From a UK perspective, one thing I am always impressed with is the clarity of language that non-UK outsource call centres' operators use. I suspect more emphasis is given on effective verbal communication for 'external' call centres, although I have on occasion found problems with accent, tempo and metre.

John

Just for the record (seeing as it was asked in the chatroom, and will soon vanish forever into the ether), Rajeshwar's question was as follows:

"what criteria should I look at ,from my agents, if I were to interview them for voice support"

Hope this clarifies things a bit.

John

Hi John,

Let me explain. In India you do have lot of people speaking English as they have studied it in their education system as second language.The Indians typically speak English the Indian way Inglish if I can call it... They do need to reduce their regional accent. Pitch, tone both are important over phone...Tone conveys feelings/emotions and pitch the pleasantness. the voice defects however slight can hinder clarity of speech and thereby create problems while speaking on phone.

Hope your curiosity is killed.

Vedula