Time was when offshore call centers in India offering customer service to American banks, airlines or technology companies had their new hires watch Hollywood movies and sitcoms like Friends and Seinfeld to learn and imitate the American accent.

The call centre agent assumed a name like “Susan” or “Mike”, spoke with an affected tone and tried to pass off as “one of them”.

But that was years ago. These days, the phony drawl and fake twang are simply not enough.

Top-tier back-office firms such as 24/7 Customer say their hiring, training and operations have come a long way from the early days of the outsourcing industry.

24/7 Customer, which has large call centre operations in Bangalore and Hyderabad, besides several overseas locations, says the whole process has evolved into a science.

In order to make its agents perform consistently and predictably, 24/7 Customer is drawing mathematical correlations between input (training) and output (performance).

By scientifically analysing and profiling job applicants, the back -office firm says it has arrived at a tried and tested formula for choosing, training and retaining talent that appears to work.

For instance, 24/7 Customer has discovered after much statistical probing that agents from the Northeast are well suited to work as customer service agents in the financial services industry for clients like banks and credit card companies.

Again, in Hyderabad where it recruits robustly, the back-office company has found that graduates of 11 specific colleges (out of the hundreds) produce the quality of people that it wants to hire.

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