- Call center employees may no longer have to deal with angry customers for long periods of time.
- SoftBank plans to use AI to make angry phone calls sound less aggressive.
- The Japanese company aims to use AI to change the voice of its customers into a “gentle, conversational tone.”
Complaints to call center employees are starting to sound less angry and they have artificial intelligence to thank.
SoftBank Corp., the communications arm of billionaire Masayoshi Son's Japanese conglomerate, is using AI to soften the tone of irate callers to reduce the stress faced by customer service workers. It looks like you are preparing to test the software.
The company, one of Japan's largest carriers, said it is testing the technology internally and externally with a view to commercialization in 2026, according to comments first reported by Reuters.
SoftBank said it is “working on developing a solution that uses AI-based emotion recognition and voice processing technology to convert customer voices into a calm conversational tone and deliver them to employees.”
“With this solution, we aim to maintain good relationships with customers through healthy communication while ensuring the psychological well-being of our employees.”
This development is likely to be welcome news for call center employees. Since the release of ChatGPT, there has been growing concern that AI will take over customer service jobs.
These concerns were exacerbated this week by the announcement of OpenAI's new model, GPT-4o. GPT-4o offers more human-like interaction with users thanks to its voice capabilities and the ability to “reason about audio, visual, and text in real time.”
But the prospect that AI could transform loud abuse into softer exchanges is undermining the beliefs of those who believe AI is likely to improve, rather than displace, many workers' jobs. It will strengthen.
SoftBank, which is making a renewed effort to invest in AI initiatives, says on its website that it sees AI as a path to a “happier future for all.”
Call center employees will feel happier if they don't end up going in the wrong direction due to verbal abuse.
