That customer service rep with the American accent might still be an Indian guy — here’s how

That hard-to-understand accent on the other side of the phone might be a thing of the past.

In some cases, one might be talking to a stateside representative, but in other cases, it could very well be an Indian who is having his or her voice disguised using artificial intelligence.

‘A solution to reduce accent bias.’

A collaboration between French company Teleperformance — the largest call-center operator in the world — and American AI company Sanas is admittedly manipulating Indian accents in real time to sound more like American or British customer service agents.

“When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard to hear, to understand,” said Teleperformance Deputy CEO Thomas Mackenbrock.

According to the Japan Times, the CEO said his company can “neutralize the accent of the Indian speaker with zero latency” in order to create “more intimacy” with the caller.

The sneaky switch “increases the customer satisfaction and reduces the average handling time,” Mackenbrock claimed, calling it “a win-win for both parties.”

It is unclear exactly which U.S. companies are using Sanas’ technology through Teleperformance, but the possibilities are massive. Currently, Teleperformance provides outsourced customer support and content moderation for Apple, TikTok, and Samsung Electronics.

In Canada, telecommunications company Telus is already implementing Sanas’ software.

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Telus is using services from Tomato.ai, a company acquired by Sanas in April. Tomato.ai uses its technology to “modify acoustic features of speech” while preserving the speaker’s voice, the Globe & Mail reported.

This reduces “accent-related friction” and addresses any mispronunciations, it is claimed.

Sanas’ co-founder told TechCrunch last year that the technology should “enhance” human connection rather than “replace” it.

“With the number of customer interactions continuing to scale globally, the need for human-to-human communication remains critical,” said Sharath Keshava Narayana.

Co-founders Maxim Serebryakov, Shawn Zhang, and Andrés Soderi came up with the company after allegedly being inspired by a fellow student’s experience as a customer service agent people couldn’t understand. The story was described through a progressive lens, however, with Narayana saying the customers’ inability to understand the friend was “accent discrimination.”

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“Max and Shawn’s friend, Raul, who had to return to Nicaragua to support his family, faced accent discrimination at his call center job,” Narayana claimed. “His experience with ‘accent neutralization training’ and the toll it took on him inspired Max and Shawn to build a solution to reduce accent bias.”

The Sun reported that companies Vodafone and eBay work with Teleperformance in the U.K. and so do portions of the government, including health services.

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