Whereas I do agree with the general contention that understanding spoken words is essential on a call back and that accents do matter, it is not a given that one American speaker can easily understand another American English speaker. Accents in the USA are all over the map -- from deep south to frozen north, from sea to shining sea. People of the Indian subcontinent and the Philippines do have an accent that is different from those in the USA but to say that this stops one from understanding the spoken words is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps better clarity could be achieved by improving the qualify of the connection ( audio quality ) and not necessarily accent neutral speech. Personally, I have had a lot of service calls where the person is from India ( very polite ), Philippines ( also very polite and helpful) and from the USA ( more business like but helpful ) and really cannot say that One is better or worse than the other. I am short of hearing and really value audio clarity more than accent neutrality. I find it really shortsighted and very simplistic to suggest that if only Americans were paired with American English speakers , all our communication issues would be ameliorated. Should we therefore consider "pairing" Brooklyn with Brooklyn, Tennessee with Tennessee, Virginia with Virginia, Arizona with Arizona ad so on and so forth? Methinks NO. We need to accept that this is a connected world and accents are facts of life. Improve audio clarity not accent neutrality.
