The BPO industry is bouncing like never before, and since voice and accent training is acknowledged as an essential requirement in the BPO industry an individual with a good command over his speech can pursue a career as a voice and accent trainer with great ease. Voice and accent trainers make your voice globally intelligible and teach young aspirants basic speech skills like when they should pause and how they can regulate their speech.

Although, there are no specific educational qualifications required to be a voice and accent trainer, a basic graduate degree is generally the prerequisite and a degree in English could be beneficial.

The skills required vary depending on the project and the type of business that is being handled. However, trainers need to have a natural instinct for the language a sound knowledge of grammar and the ability to accept feedback while training. A voice and accent trainer polishes the already present linguistic skills in an employee. The trainer helps improve communication skills, trains individuals on concepts related to listening and dealing with various customer types by using voice modulation and other soft skills.

As a voice and accent trainer one should be comfortable with the language including aspects like pronunciation, spellings, grammar, vocabulary and fluency in verbal English. While earlier, executives were required to be trained in a specific American or British accent, now neutral global English is the accepted norm.

Another important quality is a natural ease with people and the ability to associate with them. One also needs to be creative in order to invent ways to keep up the energy levels during the training process. Many companies prefer to hire candidates with experience. But anyone whether it is housewife, a fresh graduate or even a retired professional, has the option of joining can join the industry if they have the requisite skill set.

There is no standard time frame for training as this occurs mostly on the job. However, it may vary between four to twelve weeks. The areas covered are accent training syllable stress, phonetics, knowledge, slang training, cross culture knowledge, accent neutralization, telephone/telesales etiquette, interaction skills customer relationship management skills and call center terminology.

There are many institutes where voice and accent trainers are employed. Most large BPOs have an in-house training and development team to facilitate continuous learning. Besides call centers one can seek employment with call center finishing/training schools which have sprung up all over the country. A CEO from London says there are many options open to a good speech trainer today. They can join corporations, airlines or even the retail industry as most companies have to match global standards.

The pay package differs with every organization, and the scale of its operations. A voice and accent trainer starts wit Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 per month. Senior trainers can earn between Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 per month.

Pay-offs of a long-term BPO career are quite attractive: the entry level salaries can almost go up to 3 lakh and up to 8 lakh per annum with 5-6 years experience at the senior levels. Job profiles are equally challenging.

English speaking graduates hold a lot of opportunities for the future. This is because of the nature of jobs that is being created in the BPO industry. As most of the work is being outsourced from US or UK, the basic requirement is having good knowledge of English. However, in spite of having such simple requirement for entry, why is BPO not viewed as a long term career option? The reasons are numerous — not safe, not good for health, not stable, etc. the list can go on.

But none of these reasons are true, all these are just doubts expressed by people outside the industry, who have no clue of how things actually are here. Let us try and look at why these doubts are baseless and how BPO is quite a good option for a long term career.