Artificial intelligence is being incorporated across a large number of industries in the world, and will now even be used in call centers.
The world’s biggest call center operator, Teleperformance SE, will be utilizing AI to help make the Indian accent of their employees more palatable for those receiving the calls. AÂ TechSpot report on the idea reveals that the AI model will analyze speech and work to modify it to match whatever accent it is programmed to duplicate. It will also preserve the original voice and emotion of the human speaker, simply aiming to make the accent less difficult to understand.
Deputy Chief Executive Officer Thomas Mackenbrock explained the goal to Bloomberg.
“When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard to hear, to understand. [This technology can] neutralize the accent of the Indian speaker with zero latency, [creates] more intimacy, increases the customer satisfaction, and reduces the average handling time,” he said.
More advanced versions of this will even be able to “transcribe the spoken words into text, accounting for various accents and speech patterns.” Once the user’s voice is fully analyzed for accent and speech pattern, the technology will get to word modifying any hard-to-understand parts.
“During the conversion, the software modifies intonation, stress patterns, and phoneme pronunciation to align with the target accent. The system employs text-to-speech (TTS) technology to synthesize the phonetic pattern and convert the text into a synthesized voice that maintains the speaker’s original tone, emotion, and identity,” the TechSpot article explains.
The company’s client base already includes some massive names including Apple, TikTok, and Samsung Electronics, and is part of the larger parent company Teleperformance AI. This business is scheduled to invest over $100 million in artificial intelligence partnerships in the next year.
X users considered the ramifications:
Interesting. Think I encountered … “AI system designed to soften the accents of English-speaking Indian workers in real time” … yesterday.
Kohl’s service center. At first, could not understand the worker, then within less than a minute … she sounded quote “normal.”
— Ms. Susan (@sands731) March 3, 2025
Won’t change sentence structure or word usage. North Americans say “question”, Indians say “doubt”. All the ones I have ever worked with have, and they’ve been from all over the subcontinent.
— Backwoods Engineer – THE ORIGINAL (@BackwoodsEnginr) March 3, 2025
But they will still start the conversation wit:Hello, Good morning Neighbor!
— John Padilla (@OverlandingJohn) March 4, 2025
I honestly wouldn’t mind that. I get very tired of asking people to repeat themselves.
— Patricia Webster (@KyppyDoodle) March 3, 2025
This is pointless. Offshore call center support typically consists of someone asking boiler plate questions in the course of flowchart navigation. AI can do this autonomously with no need for the human middle man. Call centers are over.
— Andre Robotewskyj (@andrexrobot) March 3, 2025
Might as well go full-AI, as they can’t/won’t solve your customer service problem regardless. They just follow a script mindlessly. One of the reasons I still bank and buy insurance from USAA is that they still employ US-based customer service reps.
— Hunington Sachs, Esq. (@huningtonsachs) March 3, 2025
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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