Currently, there are over 50 million Americans of Hispanic/Latino origin that live in the U.S. This makes up around 16 percent of the total resident population of about 309 million people in this country.

It is forecasted that by the year 2020, the Hispanic population and market will continue to grow to nearly 60 million.

While many ethnic populations completely purge themselves of their original primary languages in order to complete the transformation into American society, it is entirely different for Hispanics. Instead, they are retaining their Spanish fluency, reports Michael Curry, chief of business development, at Conexion One. These U.S. residents prefer to speak in Spanish even if they are fluent in English, especially if it is anything related to customer service, support, or sales calls.

Curry has witnessed this through his own experience, as his wife is from Cuba but grew up on the West Coast of the U.S., and his household uses both English and Spanish languages on a daily basis."If you have to get details, go technical and show compassion you have to go to Spanish when speaking to a Hispanic household," Curry said in a recent interview.

A huge obstacle that remains is how to serve the American Hispanic population while retaining dialect.

Mexico is the world's largest Spanish-speaking country with over 112 million people. Mexico offers a high level of cultural affinity. Americans of Mexican descent make up the largest group of Hispanics, with 67 percent compared with the 8 percent for next largest, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Census reported. The accent, tone, pace and words used are distinctive in Mexican Spanish compared to that of other countries within Latin America and the Caribbean, "akin in English between Alabama and New York City," says Curry. This anomaly is much more magnified and noticeable compared to English.

Curry stated, “I guess the Mexican American community is pretty loyal towards the old country, as they would say. All-in-all, we listen to the calls and the person calling the call center hears the Dialect within the first two words spoken and then the general talk about Mexico, Mexican food and/or relatives living in Mexico start. The calls just seem to go smoother. Case in point: it's like someone recognizing a Southern Accent from the South. It just goes smoother. In the case of the Hispanic community this happened around 70% of the time.”

Dialect is as crucial to a business as the services and products you are offering. Over the years, Conexion One has had numerous customers who have great products with little or no success within the U.S. Hispanic marketplace. Why, you ask? This is because in most, if not all cases, the issue is dialect. When you service a market segment with a familiar voice you will succeed.

Curry said, “I see this all the time in the Philippines whereas classes are advertised all over Manila for call center agents to learn how to drop the accent within English, and some of the best wages are paid to the agents who have neutral accented English. The same hold true in Spanish however it’s not dropping the accent; it’s about matching the Spanish to the intended market. The fact that outsourcers are not focusing on this within Latin America is the key to our success. Case in point and not to be critical, would you serve your English customer with a highly accented English, say from Russia? The Spanish language dialect is just as noticeable.”