Call Centre Giant Using AI To Remove Indian Accent For Western Customers

Teleperformance, the world's biggest call centre operator is using artificial intelligence (AI) to '"neutralise" Indian accents for Western customers, according to a report in The Telegraph. The company said it was applying real-time AI software on phone calls to remove the accents of English-speaking Indian customer service agents that will enhance clarity and improve customer interactions.

The French company has around 90,000 employees in India and tens of thousands in other countries which serve customers in the UK including the government, the NHS, Vodafone and eBay. The AI-driven solution has been developed by Palo Alto-based startup Sanas which also includes background noise cancellation technology that filters out disruptive sounds such as office chatter, sirens, or even crowing roosters to improve call quality.

"It's a technology that allows [us] to neutralise accents in real time without any data storage," Teleperformance's Markus Schmitt told investors last week.

"You have obviously the issue we talked about human connection, human empathy. We have first implemented Sanas with clients in India. And sometimes, there is a difficulty people in India talking and vice versa with clients from the US."

Sanas, which claims to be at the forefront of AI innovations that blur the line between machine-generated enhancements and human interactions, claimed that its product has been developed with the goal of "reducing accent-based discrimination".

Notably, Teleperformance has taken a stake in the US-based company which will see Teleperformance's calls used to train the company's accent software.

"In a world that is ubiquitous with AI, the element of the human ... will be also equally important because it's about building human connection and having this element of human empathy, connectivity will be something that will be equally valuable in the future," said Teleperformance's chief executive Thomas Mackenbrock.

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Social media reacts

As the news went viral, social media users had varied reactions to the implementation of the accent-changing AI-software.

"I don't mind Indian accents. I'm just glad to be talking to a real person who wants to help, and usually can," said one user, while another added: "I don't know if it solves any problem. I just don't want to be scammed."

A third commented: "I'd honestly like to talk to the real person with the real accent."

Amid the rise in AI chatbots that can handle several customer queries simultaneously, call centre companies have been under pressure to evolve.