Call centre giant using AI to mask Indian accents for Western customers: Report

Teleperformance, the world's biggest call centre operator, is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to "neutralise" Indian accents for customers from Western countries, according to The Telegraph. The French company said it was using real-time AI software on phone calls to increase "human empathy" between two people while speaking over the line.

Teleperformance has offices in several countries, including India, where it has 90,000 employees, and tens of thousands in other countries. The company's customers in the UK include the government, Vodafone, eBay and the Health Service (NHS), the country's publicly funded healthcare system.

The company employs software from American firm Sanas, which, according to it, helps the system to "build a more understanding world" and cuts down on miscommunication. It also said it would expand the AI technology to other countries after introducing it in India.

"It's a technology that allows (us) to neutralise accents in real-time without any data storage," Teleperformance's Thomas Mackenbrock said.

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

This significant achievement comes at a time when call centre companies are facing potential competition from AI due to a mushrooming of chatbots which can automatically handle customer queries.

In the past, Sanas has been criticised for making people's voices "sound whiter". According to the company, call centre operators like the technology and it creates more opportunities in countries, such as India and the Philippines, where a majority of the working class converse in English.

Demonstrations of Sanas's technology showed Indian accents acquiring a distinctively American twang and reducing background noise, The Telegraph reported.

Teleperformance has taken a stake in Sanas, which will see the French company's calls being used to train people using the accent software developed by the US firm.

Mackenbrock said the use of real-time AI software would build "closer and more intimate relationships" between workers and customers.

"In a world that is ubiquitous with AI, the element of the human will also be 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," Mackenbrock said.