“Not only do we get to encounter Americans over the phone,” said 24-year-old Kathleen Chan, “we also get to encounter people such as Hindi speakers and Chinese. Indians are definitely the hardest to understand.”

The difficulty in understanding Indian English accents extends to the UK as well, and, importantly, directly to one of the industry’s core customer bases.

British Telecom announced late last year that it would be pulling the plug on its Indian call centres, citing that their customers “would prefer to speak to a contact centre in the UK”. Currently, 50% of BT’s call centres are in the UK, but by the end of 2016 the company has pledged that more than 80% of calls will be handled within the country.

Adopting an ear for the vast soundscape of voices inherent to global business is increasingly weighted as a significant focus in call centre work.

“Accent neutralisation is at the top of the list,” said Villena, “but the game is changing now. It’s not all about the accent anymore — it is now geared towards comprehensibility and their [the workers’] ability to interact with the customers regardless of if they have very strong accents or if their accent is neutral.”

This capacity to chat among other interpersonal skills are, after all, the mainstay of the BPO business, and a skill that seems second nature for the current fresh-faced classroom of soon-to-be call centre agents at SPi Global. All but one of the 10 students is below the age of 25 — even the teacher is young, just 22 years old.