Callers too are used to the idea that the person at the other end of the phone may be in India and are accommodating of Indian English. Earlier, many callers launched into full-blown verbal attacks and some even declared they did not want to speak to anybody from India.

Top-tier back-office firms’ hiring processes have matured with time. They now test applicants for speech clarity, attentiveness and problem resolution capabilities before even handing them the offer letters and getting them started on training.

In a well-lit training room at 24/7 Customer’s modern call centre in Bangalore’s Inner Ring Road, two dozen new inductees have shown up for an accent training class.

A trainer with a decidedly American accent is leading the class through the nuances of American pronunciation. The word ‘determine’ is pronounced with an ‘in’ sound at the end, he tells the class, and not a ‘mine’ sound, as some Indians tend to say it.

He asks them to flap the ‘t’ in ‘university’ and ride the theta sound in ‘third’. “No, no”it is not the Hindi “tha” sound,” he tells a new hire.

Accent training, which was once the sum total or at least a big chunk of a call centre worker’s education, has become just another module in the making of an Indian call centre agent.