SoftBank is aiming to tackle rising stress levels among its call centre staff, who face an increasing number of angry outbursts from disgruntled customers.
 "SoftBank develops AI voice technology to protect employees from angry customers")
Nandini Singh New Delhi
Japanese technology giant SoftBank Corp. has introduced an innovative voice-translating telephone technology to mitigate the growing problem of “customer harassment.” The artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solution allegedly transforms even the most irate callers into a calmer, more soothing voice, reducing stress for call center agents, according to a report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
According to the report, the Tokyo-based company is aiming to address increasing stress among call centre staff who are subject to angry outbursts from disgruntled customers.
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SoftBank engineers have been developing the “emotion cancellation” system for three years, inspired by employee Toshiyuki Nakatani, who watched a television program highlighting the abuse many employees had received.
“We developed emotion cancelling in response to the social issue of customer harassment of call centre staff and to protect them,” Nakatani told the South China Morning Post.
The AI system was trained to recognise more than 10,000 audio samples, with 10 male and female actors speaking over 100 common phrases in a range of emotional tones, including shouting, blaming and demanding apologies.
Importantly, the technology does not change what the caller says, but rather significantly reduces intonation – so the caller does not realize that their voice has been altered.
For example, high-pitched female voices are automatically lowered to sound less resonant, while louder male voices are raised to sound softer. Despite the changes, some element of anger is retained to allow operators to respond appropriately to caller concerns.
A recent survey by UA Zensen, Japan's largest industrial labor union with 1.8 million members, found that 46.8% of service industry workers had experienced harassment from customers in the past two years, some of whom were so traumatized they required counseling.
In response, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to implement a local ordinance to curb customer harassment, including banning “abusive language and unreasonable demands that harm the working environment,” but the ordinance does not include any penalties.
