How to Improve Your Accent for Call Center

if you can get these three steps right then you can nail any accent you want whether you're neutralizing your accent for clarity or mimicking a specific one to keep your customers from demanding for native speaker over the phone then these three steps will help you in this video I'm going to take my four years of experience as a c Center agent and condense it into a three-step plan that I would follow if I were a call center agent non-native speaker trying to improve my accent for a call center job listening was how each and every one of us learned our mother tongue so to learn another language it only makes sense that we also should start by listening and I'm not just talking about passively listening I'm talking about listening with intention pay attention to the Fanatics in pronunciation it was such a horrible Sensation that each itch made me cry each itch each itch made me cry what's the difference each each it it oh okay so each it not each it but each itch to the pitch hi can I ask for a glass of water please hi can I ask for a glass of water please ination we have one room available today I'm just wondering if you'd be interested in that we have one room available today I'm just wondering if you'd be interested in that stress he's a criminal lawyer he's a criminal no liar Rhythm let me get a Coke one lemonade one large Burger one large pizza and a salad and Tempo I told you I don't want to talk about it's so embarrassing just get it out of my sight right now here's how to listen productively first you got to decide on a Target accent what's the specific accent that you want to learn in my case I decided to learn the general American English because our customers were in the US and can Canada American and Canadian customers understand that accent well so that was for me the the main goal to be understood so now once you've decided on a Target accent it's time to listen to Casual conversations why casual and why conversations conversations because they'll allow you to hear the sound patterns in bigger units and by bigger units I don't mean per syllable not per word like we learn in school but in phrases and sentences and the benefit of hearing the sound patterns in phrases and sentences is that you gain a deeper understanding of how the sounds interact with one another in a connected speech and connected speech is what we're after for here we don't converse in syllables we might Converse in single word conversations but pretty soon we're going to need phrases and sentences to Express more complex thoughts and ideas and Casual because that's pretty much the type of conversations that you're going to be having with your customers on a daily basis this is Candace home I help you yes I'm trying to get into my account because I have a $20 credit I would like to use and it won't let me get into it CU I don't know my password and I've tried to email for a password to be sent to me and it will not work M oh that's fine I can reset the password for you can I have your email address just listen to Everyday casual conversations I'm talking about YouTube videos podcasts or movies because they usually reflect the daily conversations of normal people but note that listening is useless without step two and that is mimicking while listening commits the sound to your memory and to your ears mimicking commits the sound to your speech organs namely the tongue lips teeth vocal cords and every single part of you respond responsible for speech you constantly feel the need to put down my husband why do you constantly feel the need to put down my husband husband H husband down my husband my husband oh I'm sure he does it out of love oh I'm sure he does it out of love well I'm sure he does it out of love same way my boyfriend makes me feel terrible about my life choices the same way my boyfriend makes me feel terrible about my life choices choices now that I don't work in a call center anymore and it's not necessary to speak the standard American English I am freely speaking English with a bayah accent what are we going to plant there in the first Garden then what you think something we eat every day do they like sun because it's under the full sun no no no maybe in in the website of the of what was that agriculture dep of Agriculture see what is best to plant I would really like to have some Tomatoes too but my tongue gets lazier and lazier so every time I I start a video like this I have to do some sort of exercise to stretch out my tongue and get used to the sounds again sometimes it could take me 30 minutes to get back to it and it's still not perfect but my point is the tongue like your brain has a memory of its own mimicking on top of listening just helps you develop that f flexibility of the tongue so when you need to access the sound you're going to be able to do it more naturally you're strengthening the muscles responsible for those sounds how to mimic productively to do that you're just going to have to exaggerate what you hear what you pay attention to when listening you have to execute when mimicking who does actually look like thow trainer he does actually look like th trainer he does actually look like look look look look like Thor Thor Thor trainer he does actually look like Thor trainer he does actually look like Thor his trainer staring at me staring at me and I'm like oh God am I am I doing something wrong and in the oh God am I am I doing something wrong oh God am I doing something wrong with mimicking on top of listening you would already get far but it's not enough there is step three and that is record yourself yes I'm talking about using the recorder of your phone so record yourself while you're mimicking the sounds and this is to have an accurate confirmation whether or not you're pronouncing the words right you would not believe how huge of a difference this could make case and point when I was starting this YouTube channel I thought that it already had a pretty decent accent you know mimicking the general American English but it turned out that I still had a lot to improve I was butchering the vowels there were sounds that I thought I was pronouncing correctly but when I heard the recording I actually wasn't my challenges have always been the vowels that are in American English but are not in bisaya for example the short I would come off as e so instead of e it becomes e so instead of video it becomes video sounds similar but there's a noticeable difference video video The schw Sound would some time sound as a or o about would become about about about connect would become connect connect connect and these are not the only sounds that I was struggling with and even now I still get these wrong every time I don't fully focus on my accent the recorder is not going to lie to you the recording just gives you an unbiased reflection of your actual pronunciation if you're brave enough you got to do it at first you will cringe at the sound of your own voice but you will get used to it so to summarize step one is to listen to recognize and get acquainted with sound patterns step two is to mimic to train your tongue and step three is to record and compare to make sure that what you say matches what you hear but all these three steps are going to be utterly useless without this one thing and that is consistency if you do this on day one day two day three but don't follow through on day four and so on then it's not going to do anything for you I think this is the hardest part of it really you know the steps but you're not executing them because you're doing other things like with any skills learning an accent mastering a language takes time effort and consistency you're not going to be able to learn everything in one go that's just not how it works and so let me add a step four and that is be consistent

Channel: Kwestyon

Views: 21,916

Keywords: call center, call centre, ielts, english as a second language

Id: cWf0JIzE4Yc

Length: 9min 5sec (545 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2024