“I’d love to put someone in jail for this”: An initial investigation of English in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry

Language for Specific Purpose (LSP) performance assessment in Asian call centres: strong and weak definitions

“…Such sociolinguistic frameworks are ideally suited to the language performance assessment of service encounters where success in the language exchange entails much more than demonstrating a baseline proficiency of spoken grammar and pronunciation ability. Interactional, discourse, intercultural and strategic competencies are key in successful call centre exchange as revealed in previous studies (see for example, Forey and Lockwood 2007;Hood and Forey, 2008). For a fuller discussion on the development of BUPLAS see Lockwood 2010, Lockwood 2012.…”

“…This is unsurprising given that outsourced contact centres have only been operating outside western English countries for a little over a decade and thus the need for assessing second language English speaker CSRs is a relatively new business requirement in this rapidly developing global industry. Previous studies in call centres (see for example Forey and Lockwood 2007;Lockwood et al, 2008) had revealed however that the source of communication breakdown on the phones 'has less to do with the traditional notions of poor language skills i.e. poor grammatical use and poor pronunciation, and more to do with poor interaction and discourse skills and cultural appreciation' (p.323).…”

English Language Assessment for the Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) Industry: Business Needs Meet Communication Needs

“…Being able to effectively build customer relationships and explain product information and policy regulations appeared to be a constant communication challenge also. For a full discussion on this early research see Forey and Lockwood 2007, Lockwood, Price and Forey 2008, Friginal, 2007 Anotherkey problem that put pressure on smooth communication on the phones related tosome of the Texman business requirements ; for example Texman require agents, in the routine account responsible for contact detail change, to 'upsell' their products at the end of the call. Specific 'upsales targets' were set for the CSRs and would be reviewed on a monthly basis.…”

“…2, No. 4; which they organized their responses and with interactional rapport building skills (Hood & Forey, 2008;Forey & Lockwood, 2007).…”

“…I also included the need for making good language choices to make meaning that emerged from the early research (Forey & Lockwood, 2007;Hood & Forey, 2008) e,g, modality, tense choices; therefore 'range' was important (III) discourse: I decided to include this criteria as it seemed to be a common business requirement for CSRs to be explaining procedures and providing lengthy explanations of surrounding their products and services; it also emerged from the early research that the clear and logicalorganisationof the message was causing breakdown (Lockwood, Forey and Price, 2008) (IV) interactive/strategic: I decided to include this as it seemed that the work of the CSRs was concerned with managing the customer relationship and repairing and misunderstandings; and again this emerged from the research. I was most concerned about this criteria as although I had worked with 'speaking 'scales and descriptors for a range of examinations, there was nothing that attempted to probe as precisely as this criteria into the relationship building capacity of the candidate.…”