Almost every time I get a call from TELUS about a new service or promotion, it’s someone from the Philippines or India. A lot of them speak English fluently, but the accent and phrasing can be pretty different from what I’m used to, and I don’t always catch everything they’re saying. Sometimes I feel like I’m guessing a big chunk of the conversation, which makes me not want to engage, especially on sales calls.
It matters more when I’m the one calling them for billing or technical support. In those cases, clarity really counts, and it can get frustrating when I have to keep asking for repeats or try to piece things together.
Honestly, I’d love something like this for my own speech too. I’m Japanese and have a fairly strong accent, and it would be nice if people could understand me more easily without having to guess.
Changing an accent doesn’t change the content the person on the other end receives it with. Most of my issues with overseas support is that they have no real context for my problem. It’s not just a language barrier, it’s a culture barrier.
When calling support in my own country it is much faster and easier, because they intuitively understand the type of issue I’m having and can better relate. I question if changing the voice would make it more frustrating, as I’d have similar issues without the obvious explanation as to why it’s happening.
The other issue is that this further incentivizes companies to off-shore their support. A lot of the reason companies don't use it comes back to the reputational style issue. Where people don't want to feel like they are getting crappy support and having to deal with not understanding people.
This is a different kind of way of using AI to eliminate local jobs and allow them to more easily outsource it to countries with low labour costs and poor labour conditions.
While I would appreciate being able to understand them better, I would not at all support this. You could maybe make an argument that using this with local staff could have some merit. As at least then they are not exploiting cheap foreign labour. There are still people living within the country of the caller who may still have strong accents like in the example you gave about yourself.
Regardless of tech you can always improve your speech. I had a Japanese girlfriend who went through the process and 80% of the results where accomplished by learning the ~20 vowel sounds found in American english (vs her native 5 vowel sounds).
This will also let the telco further train agents to handle calls without the humans once enough scenarios are in place.
Still, they could just give the employees training to learn additional accents.
The English accents around the world were left behind with the subsets of English people were taught to be able to aspire to entry level administrative jobs.
Don't tell the call spammers this or they'll train all their "agents" to start phone calls with "what's up, bro" or something they think is the stereotypical opposite of formal.
Oh! Dear Lord. I still want to hear my Indian friends speak Indian to me during Support Calls. These days, I’m hearing American accents trying to calm me down over my complaints on that excess masala in the idli-dosa-pav-bhaji butteerr-chicken combo in the El Camino Eatery in the outskirts of Jhalandar.
Anytime one of those "you can eat cuisine from one region of the world for the rest of your life" memes comes up, I'm baffled that anybody would fail to pick the region that contains both South and Southeast Asia.
Comcast (Xfinity) is doing this too. I was absolutely convinced I was talking to an artificial voice but the human-like capabilities of that voice to respond were far beyond what I'd expect out of LLMs. I think it must have just been done to hide the accent.
I had a contractor group come highly recommended, but I literally had to focus so hard on each word that I couldn’t make it work. I don’t know where they were from but I heard easier to understand accents in Delhi.
I realized quickly how it was changing my thinking process to devote so much to each word.
I think this is a good idea.
Almost every time I get a call from TELUS about a new service or promotion, it’s someone from the Philippines or India. A lot of them speak English fluently, but the accent and phrasing can be pretty different from what I’m used to, and I don’t always catch everything they’re saying. Sometimes I feel like I’m guessing a big chunk of the conversation, which makes me not want to engage, especially on sales calls.
It matters more when I’m the one calling them for billing or technical support. In those cases, clarity really counts, and it can get frustrating when I have to keep asking for repeats or try to piece things together.
Honestly, I’d love something like this for my own speech too. I’m Japanese and have a fairly strong accent, and it would be nice if people could understand me more easily without having to guess.
Changing an accent doesn’t change the content the person on the other end receives it with. Most of my issues with overseas support is that they have no real context for my problem. It’s not just a language barrier, it’s a culture barrier.
When calling support in my own country it is much faster and easier, because they intuitively understand the type of issue I’m having and can better relate. I question if changing the voice would make it more frustrating, as I’d have similar issues without the obvious explanation as to why it’s happening.
The other issue is that this further incentivizes companies to off-shore their support. A lot of the reason companies don't use it comes back to the reputational style issue. Where people don't want to feel like they are getting crappy support and having to deal with not understanding people.
This is a different kind of way of using AI to eliminate local jobs and allow them to more easily outsource it to countries with low labour costs and poor labour conditions.
While I would appreciate being able to understand them better, I would not at all support this. You could maybe make an argument that using this with local staff could have some merit. As at least then they are not exploiting cheap foreign labour. There are still people living within the country of the caller who may still have strong accents like in the example you gave about yourself.
Some call centers do train on the cultural and society side of the places they serve.
Obviously not enough of them. Most are used to under-bidding and being stretched to take the lowest possible price.
Regardless of tech you can always improve your speech. I had a Japanese girlfriend who went through the process and 80% of the results where accomplished by learning the ~20 vowel sounds found in American english (vs her native 5 vowel sounds).
You get calls about a new service or promotion, and it's the diction of the caller that makes you not wish to engage...?!
This will also let the telco further train agents to handle calls without the humans once enough scenarios are in place.
Still, they could just give the employees training to learn additional accents.
The English accents around the world were left behind with the subsets of English people were taught to be able to aspire to entry level administrative jobs.
Someone recommended this to read, not sure if anyone else has read it: https://archive.org/details/educationascultu00carn
It feels like it bears some underpinning and contextual relevance.
Original source (please submit): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-telus-ai-ac...
Related last year:
AI Accent Conversion for call centers (48 points, 70 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43514141
Call centres using AI to 'whiten' Indian accents (8+6 points, 0+6 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43292311
Gift link
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/2c42fdd7045b26c60c180ca...
Doesn't matter.
As soon as I hear the "Mr Firstname and how are you today?" I hang up.
Call spammers have not worked out that a formal polite greeting is a big giveaway.
Don't tell the call spammers this or they'll train all their "agents" to start phone calls with "what's up, bro" or something they think is the stereotypical opposite of formal.
Oh! Dear Lord. I still want to hear my Indian friends speak Indian to me during Support Calls. These days, I’m hearing American accents trying to calm me down over my complaints on that excess masala in the idli-dosa-pav-bhaji butteerr-chicken combo in the El Camino Eatery in the outskirts of Jhalandar.
i enjoy good eating also.
a sweet korma, or a vindaloo are my most favorite.
Anytime one of those "you can eat cuisine from one region of the world for the rest of your life" memes comes up, I'm baffled that anybody would fail to pick the region that contains both South and Southeast Asia.
Usually the title goes: XXX uses AI to replace Call-Agents
Comcast (Xfinity) is doing this too. I was absolutely convinced I was talking to an artificial voice but the human-like capabilities of that voice to respond were far beyond what I'd expect out of LLMs. I think it must have just been done to hide the accent.
Like all things AI, this one's tricky.
Scam calls sounding "more legitimate" because it passes the (unfortunately racist) filters most people have.
In my case at least, (for support calls) it's not a "racist filter", it's that I sometimes simply cannot understand what they are saying.
I had a contractor group come highly recommended, but I literally had to focus so hard on each word that I couldn’t make it work. I don’t know where they were from but I heard easier to understand accents in Delhi.
I realized quickly how it was changing my thinking process to devote so much to each word.
i know that i'm supposed to be mad that this is racist or it help obfuscate offshoring, but i'm fine with it if it actually makes conversing easier.
It strikes me as being more like defense against racism, but I can see how it's also erasure. Still, imagine having it built into a hearing aid?
Right? Like can we do this everywhere? It can even be a two way thing if that makes it easier for BOTH parties to understand each other.
My current company is global and while everyone can speak English well sometimes accents make it almost impossible to communicate.