The AI startup erasing call center worker accents
September 4, 2022 9:47 AM Subscribe
A Silicon Valley startup offers voice-altering tech to call center workers around the world: ‘Yes, this is wrong … but a lot of things exist in the world’ Hi, good morning. I’m calling in from Bangalore, India.” I’m talking on speakerphone to a man with an obvious Indian accent. He pauses. “Now I have enabled the accent translation,” he says. It’s the same person, but he sounds completely different: loud and slightly nasal, impossible to distinguish from the accents of my friends in Brooklyn.
I dunno, as someone who has a noticeable but relatively innocuous regional US accent, I haven't felt much pressure to conform as I have moved, but I've gotten the occasional "you talk funny" conversation.
In the case of call-center workers overseas, there is a definite hostility toward them, and electronically altering their voices to "sound more American" is erasing their identity and making them even more replaceable, so, if costs go up in India, you can just move your operation to the Philippines with the customers none the wiser. It's one more step in dehumanizing global workers.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:14 AM on September 4, 2022 [23 favorites]
In the case of call-center workers overseas, there is a definite hostility toward them, and electronically altering their voices to "sound more American" is erasing their identity and making them even more replaceable, so, if costs go up in India, you can just move your operation to the Philippines with the customers none the wiser. It's one more step in dehumanizing global workers.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:14 AM on September 4, 2022 [23 favorites]
The demo A/B sample on the Sanas web site sounds fucking terrible. They've just made a human sound like computer-generated speech, which means the human call center employees subject to the filter will be treated by callers as inhuman... OK to yell at, curse at, and otherwise abuse. Silicon Valley never does anything that doesn't make the lives of employees worse, do they?
posted by lefty lucky cat at 10:20 AM on September 4, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 10:20 AM on September 4, 2022 [11 favorites]
Do they customise the accent to the customer? Regional dialect? How about racial vernaculars? Age-related vocabulary changes? Wouldn't that be a hell of a thing. Great way to get your customers to sympathise with you, huh? I'm not particularly creeped out by this, I mean, after all pre-sales they take every opportunity to change company branding to match your demographic.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:20 AM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:20 AM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Call center workers are easily tripped up by idiomatic speech. They may speak English, and quite well at that, but they don’t necessarily speak American or regional American. An accent-fixer won’t fix that at all.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 10:24 AM on September 4, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 10:24 AM on September 4, 2022 [7 favorites]
As someone with a strong accent when speaking in English, I'd gladly pay a modest amount to get access to something like that, but Sanas doesn't seem to have B2C plans.
Worrying about "erasing my cultural identity" sounds nice for people who can afford to think about such things but in the end I can't find a single positive thing about my accent and the effects it has had and continues to have in my professional life.
posted by simmering octagon at 10:30 AM on September 4, 2022 [30 favorites]
Worrying about "erasing my cultural identity" sounds nice for people who can afford to think about such things but in the end I can't find a single positive thing about my accent and the effects it has had and continues to have in my professional life.
posted by simmering octagon at 10:30 AM on September 4, 2022 [30 favorites]
electronically altering their voices to "sound more American" is erasing their identity and making them even more replaceable, so, if costs go up in India, you can just move your operation to the Philippines with the customers none the wiser
I don't think most American customers who aren't themselves of Indian or Filipino descent would clock the difference (not because they're similar, but because the customers are oblivious). Also, the odds of someone remembering that previously there were Indian call-center workers and now there are Filipino ones are also very low. (The companies hiring the vendors definitely know.) The big perceived change is from American accent to not-Western accent, which is really what they're trying to sell here.
I will be curious to see how this changes user satisfaction. There's a racism aspect here, but there's also a practical aspect. Fact: seriously divergent accents and dialects (American English isn't English English isn't Indian English isn't Filipino English) on either side of this kind of conversation do impede communication. They've already scripted down many of the differences in style in business communication (Indian business English style reads pompous and overwrought to Americans; god only knows how American business English sounds to Indians, probably super-curt, direct, and rude). Does changing to a robotic-intoned but more similar accent help the customer? (Shouldn't they also be doing it in reverse to help the employee?) Will diminishing perceived different ethnic identity reduce the racist negative reaction? Or are differences in dialect still going to have a big negative impact, either practically or in tipping off the customer that the call center is overseas?
Either way, thank God this is what we're spending our resources on.
posted by praemunire at 10:36 AM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
I don't think most American customers who aren't themselves of Indian or Filipino descent would clock the difference (not because they're similar, but because the customers are oblivious). Also, the odds of someone remembering that previously there were Indian call-center workers and now there are Filipino ones are also very low. (The companies hiring the vendors definitely know.) The big perceived change is from American accent to not-Western accent, which is really what they're trying to sell here.
I will be curious to see how this changes user satisfaction. There's a racism aspect here, but there's also a practical aspect. Fact: seriously divergent accents and dialects (American English isn't English English isn't Indian English isn't Filipino English) on either side of this kind of conversation do impede communication. They've already scripted down many of the differences in style in business communication (Indian business English style reads pompous and overwrought to Americans; god only knows how American business English sounds to Indians, probably super-curt, direct, and rude). Does changing to a robotic-intoned but more similar accent help the customer? (Shouldn't they also be doing it in reverse to help the employee?) Will diminishing perceived different ethnic identity reduce the racist negative reaction? Or are differences in dialect still going to have a big negative impact, either practically or in tipping off the customer that the call center is overseas?
Either way, thank God this is what we're spending our resources on.
posted by praemunire at 10:36 AM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Also whenever I see a headline like this: The AI startup erasing call center worker accents, I think: no they're not. They're faking it somehow, and/or breaking laws to do it. The skepticism is so knee-jerk now! It's depressing.
posted by praemunire at 10:40 AM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 10:40 AM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
I do agree with all the humanitarian concerns here, but I'll just mention that it will almost certainly be helpful for many people who speak English as a second (or third or fourth or fifth) language. Many people in other non-English-speaking countries talking to people in yet other countries, using English as the common language they can use to communicate, as well as immigrants to anglophone countries. My husband tells hilarious (I should put "hilarious" in quotes, but he thinks they're hilarious, and I'll respect that :) stories about his communication / understanding problems when first coming to the US, and feeling pretty cocky about his English skills, only to find out he could understand almost nobody, because deep south, AAVE, pop culture, slang, idioms, etc.
posted by taz at 10:41 AM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by taz at 10:41 AM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Their website has a broken UI but the demo is here. It sounds like a fully synthetic voice, like a TikTok narrator, although I imagine differences in cadence, etc will come through.
My complaint with non-US call centers has nothing to do with accent or country. It's that it's a sign that the company has decided lowering cost is their primary goal with customer service. Typically the offshore centers are not empowered to take any useful action on your behalf and many are badly trained, not even able to follow their scripts reliably. I don't think papering over the accent is going to help with the real problem of companies treating customer service purely as a cost center to be minimized.
I appreciate the folks commenting here talking about how having English as their second language can be a hindrance. Maybe this tech could be helpful a little like the simple gender-shifters that are now pretty common, particularly in online gaming.
posted by Nelson at 10:53 AM on September 4, 2022 [9 favorites]
My complaint with non-US call centers has nothing to do with accent or country. It's that it's a sign that the company has decided lowering cost is their primary goal with customer service. Typically the offshore centers are not empowered to take any useful action on your behalf and many are badly trained, not even able to follow their scripts reliably. I don't think papering over the accent is going to help with the real problem of companies treating customer service purely as a cost center to be minimized.
I appreciate the folks commenting here talking about how having English as their second language can be a hindrance. Maybe this tech could be helpful a little like the simple gender-shifters that are now pretty common, particularly in online gaming.
posted by Nelson at 10:53 AM on September 4, 2022 [9 favorites]
Their demo starts with a perfectly understandable person talking. I wonder what will happen when it's a muffled, clipped, 64Mhz SIP call. I suspect this will go nowhere when people get irritated it's even less understandable.
posted by hoborg at 11:19 AM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by hoborg at 11:19 AM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm not a robot. You're a robot.
posted by flabdablet at 11:44 AM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 11:44 AM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
If they have a B2C version, I want it.
I have friends who pay tons of money for accent coaching (and they aren't call center workers - they're mid-level white collar workers) because they know it makes a difference, and they need it to progress in their career. People are already trying to change their accents - they're just spending a ton of time, money, emotional angst and mental energy on this. (Hopefully it's obvious that by "people" I mostly mean BIPOC, non-US / non-UK people - not so much a white US-ian trying to sound less Midwestern; the stakes and inequalities at hand are very different from the former to the latter.)
Worrying about "erasing my cultural identity" sounds nice for people who can afford to think about such things
yeah - this.
I don't feel insecure about my cultural identity. My accent shifts depending on where I am and the people I speak to, but it doesn't blend completely. My voice is also very distinctive in itself - with a formant composition that's good for some use-cases, less-good for others. To me (for my own personal use, without referring to the wider social implications) the use of an accent-altering app would be pragmatic - to sound more "normal" to people who have a silly and unfair idea of what "normal" should sound like (whether they're conscious of that bias or not), who are in charge of making decisions that could impact my life, especially professionally (whether that's for external business meetings or internal daily interactions with coworkers).
BIPOC, non-US people are already so used to code-switching. Or having two names (one in English, the other with some sort of "racial/ethnic marker"). (Similarly - are parents that give their children two names widening their kids' options, or "erasing" their cultural identity since white/US/European people are more likely to use the English name than the other? Whatever the case - many of us are made to live in this kind of duality, or really a spectrum of identities, from birth.) We already have to straddle multiple worlds (and invest a tremendous amount of mental energy and time to do so, constantly). What this startup offers just eases that burden, discounts that price we're already paying.
(It's like using the earpiece in Everything Everywhere All At Once vs figuring out how to jump worlds manually.)
My brain is already tired from lots of things, and I would appreciate one more tool to deal with something I already deal with.
Will it further entrench racial/social biases? (Does makeup entrench sexist/misogynist biases and expectations?) Maybe its very existence will at least get people to think about these biases more, and examine their systems of discrimination more closely. Because this discrimination and bias has always existed, and people have been having to deal with it in their own ways all this time. The existence and traction of this startup just brings their labor and struggle into sharper focus, and makes it more apparent to people who would rather believe that these biases are getting better, and that other more palatable (read: subtle, invisible, less uncomfortably obvious) solutions should be sought first.
(Also - this isn't even just about people who have English as a second language - there are people out there who have English as their first language, but without a US/UK accent. Who have been congratulated for speaking their first language "so well!" or dismissed when talking about English / English literature / English copyediting because apparently it isn't really their language...)
posted by aielen at 11:59 AM on September 4, 2022 [15 favorites]
I have friends who pay tons of money for accent coaching (and they aren't call center workers - they're mid-level white collar workers) because they know it makes a difference, and they need it to progress in their career. People are already trying to change their accents - they're just spending a ton of time, money, emotional angst and mental energy on this. (Hopefully it's obvious that by "people" I mostly mean BIPOC, non-US / non-UK people - not so much a white US-ian trying to sound less Midwestern; the stakes and inequalities at hand are very different from the former to the latter.)
Worrying about "erasing my cultural identity" sounds nice for people who can afford to think about such things
yeah - this.
I don't feel insecure about my cultural identity. My accent shifts depending on where I am and the people I speak to, but it doesn't blend completely. My voice is also very distinctive in itself - with a formant composition that's good for some use-cases, less-good for others. To me (for my own personal use, without referring to the wider social implications) the use of an accent-altering app would be pragmatic - to sound more "normal" to people who have a silly and unfair idea of what "normal" should sound like (whether they're conscious of that bias or not), who are in charge of making decisions that could impact my life, especially professionally (whether that's for external business meetings or internal daily interactions with coworkers).
BIPOC, non-US people are already so used to code-switching. Or having two names (one in English, the other with some sort of "racial/ethnic marker"). (Similarly - are parents that give their children two names widening their kids' options, or "erasing" their cultural identity since white/US/European people are more likely to use the English name than the other? Whatever the case - many of us are made to live in this kind of duality, or really a spectrum of identities, from birth.) We already have to straddle multiple worlds (and invest a tremendous amount of mental energy and time to do so, constantly). What this startup offers just eases that burden, discounts that price we're already paying.
(It's like using the earpiece in Everything Everywhere All At Once vs figuring out how to jump worlds manually.)
My brain is already tired from lots of things, and I would appreciate one more tool to deal with something I already deal with.
Will it further entrench racial/social biases? (Does makeup entrench sexist/misogynist biases and expectations?) Maybe its very existence will at least get people to think about these biases more, and examine their systems of discrimination more closely. Because this discrimination and bias has always existed, and people have been having to deal with it in their own ways all this time. The existence and traction of this startup just brings their labor and struggle into sharper focus, and makes it more apparent to people who would rather believe that these biases are getting better, and that other more palatable (read: subtle, invisible, less uncomfortably obvious) solutions should be sought first.
(Also - this isn't even just about people who have English as a second language - there are people out there who have English as their first language, but without a US/UK accent. Who have been congratulated for speaking their first language "so well!" or dismissed when talking about English / English literature / English copyediting because apparently it isn't really their language...)
posted by aielen at 11:59 AM on September 4, 2022 [15 favorites]
(thank you for the correction on ESL vs speaking English without a US/UK accent. My apologies for getting that wrong above.)
posted by Nelson at 12:19 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 12:19 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Having worked in a US call center alongside people with Indian accents, the level of abuse they take for sounding how they sound is absolutely unbelievable. It makes you sick. People start off rude and only get worse. It's a hard job already and it's vastly harder if you sound like you might possibly be located in India.
I don't think using this kind of thing should be required of people who don't want to use it. But I also think it might be a very useful tool for some call center workers who are just trying to do their jobs without becoming some avatar of globalization and outsourcing.
posted by potrzebie at 12:21 PM on September 4, 2022 [11 favorites]
I don't think using this kind of thing should be required of people who don't want to use it. But I also think it might be a very useful tool for some call center workers who are just trying to do their jobs without becoming some avatar of globalization and outsourcing.
posted by potrzebie at 12:21 PM on September 4, 2022 [11 favorites]
This sounds like the “Voice Authority Enhancer” feature of the imaginary WASP mobile phone in Nathan Barley, only turned around and made dystopian because 2022.
posted by acb at 12:28 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by acb at 12:28 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm surprised by the assumption (based on the direction of this discussion) that this will be used by legitimate call centres and not scam callers selling duct cleaning services or impersonating banks/Amazon/airlines/police departments/etc. attempting to defraud people. Anything they can do to sound more like the people in the country they are calling (as they usually call from outside a country's national borders to avoid prosecution) would be beneficial to them in their criminal activity.
posted by sardonyx at 12:59 PM on September 4, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by sardonyx at 12:59 PM on September 4, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think we're a few years away from a massive backlash against any sort of virtual work and even online socializing thanks to things like this. We've got deepfakes, we've got tiktok filters, we've got vtubers, and its just going to get more and more realistic and real-time. We're going to hit a tipping point where nothing on a screen can be trusted as "real" and interacting in person will be the only way to have a "real" conversation.
That or we as a culture are going to run with it. Which I'm cool with. This is definitely going to be a big part of our future.
posted by thecjm at 1:04 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
That or we as a culture are going to run with it. Which I'm cool with. This is definitely going to be a big part of our future.
posted by thecjm at 1:04 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
I work in customer service, and it's wild how different interactions can go based on voice. Chats just don't have that same kind of variance. I can see this as very tempting to help people get taken more seriously, and treated more calmly. But at the same time, how alienating to have to disguise your voice to get treated a little better? But I don't think the technology is the problem in this scenario.
posted by Garm at 1:25 PM on September 4, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Garm at 1:25 PM on September 4, 2022 [6 favorites]
I wrote a sci Fi short story once where cryptographic encryption is too expensive so the only way to know a message is real is to hand-deliver it ... Thus leading to the Age of Letters again.
In the UK as a grad student, I had a huge accent advantage even over the other international students. They couldn't always understand each other, or the natives (my school was in York, the regional accents are different from the UK broadcast standard). But almost everyone could understand my US (New Jersey) accent, and I could understand almost everyone. It made it so easy to make friends....
posted by subdee at 2:19 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
In the UK as a grad student, I had a huge accent advantage even over the other international students. They couldn't always understand each other, or the natives (my school was in York, the regional accents are different from the UK broadcast standard). But almost everyone could understand my US (New Jersey) accent, and I could understand almost everyone. It made it so easy to make friends....
posted by subdee at 2:19 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
Anything they can do to sound more like the people in the country they are calling (as they usually call from outside a country's national borders to avoid prosecution) would be beneficial to them in their criminal activity.
True, but the price will need to come down. Those places rely on economies of scale. It's not handcrafted scamming, it's calling 1000 people (arbitrary number, but you get the idea) in the hopes that 3 will bite.
There's some horrible collections agency calling my number every single day to try to talk to someone with a last name that kinda sorta sounds like mine. I've had this number for quite some time, so this must be off the lowest-grade possible list of contact info--but they have been doing it daily for months. It's just blasts.
posted by praemunire at 2:51 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
True, but the price will need to come down. Those places rely on economies of scale. It's not handcrafted scamming, it's calling 1000 people (arbitrary number, but you get the idea) in the hopes that 3 will bite.
There's some horrible collections agency calling my number every single day to try to talk to someone with a last name that kinda sorta sounds like mine. I've had this number for quite some time, so this must be off the lowest-grade possible list of contact info--but they have been doing it daily for months. It's just blasts.
posted by praemunire at 2:51 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
I ran across this via an SFGate article that shows up in previews with the subhead “We don't foresee anything bad coming out of this,” said the company's president. If that doesn't feel like hamfisted foreshadowing...
posted by polymath at 2:51 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by polymath at 2:51 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Some of y’all need to see Sorry to Bother You …
Accommodations that help the underclasses thrive in a shitty system are always going to be contentious, and make left-thinking people uncomfortable. But if you’re looking for radical movement in tech or business you’re looking the wrong way.
posted by wemayfreeze at 3:40 PM on September 4, 2022 [10 favorites]
Accommodations that help the underclasses thrive in a shitty system are always going to be contentious, and make left-thinking people uncomfortable. But if you’re looking for radical movement in tech or business you’re looking the wrong way.
posted by wemayfreeze at 3:40 PM on September 4, 2022 [10 favorites]
I kept expecting the "fixed" voice to ask me if I knew the name of the movie I wanted to watch.
posted by Sphinx at 4:31 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Sphinx at 4:31 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Will it actually do anything about the general unintelligibility of ordinary speech through VOIP lines these days? It's like trying to talk through a sponge. I've got a completely boring Anglo Australian accent, I speak for work to other people who mostly have the same, and if it would stop me having to repeat myself or ask someone to please say it again slower, while the line drops random seconds and squelches everything down, I'd take a computerised nasal-Brooklyn accent in an instant.
If the future is computerised Beastie Boys shouting at each other, like people-modems, look it'll be weird, but whatever makes the phone calls shorter.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:06 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
If the future is computerised Beastie Boys shouting at each other, like people-modems, look it'll be weird, but whatever makes the phone calls shorter.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:06 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
This definitely feels uncomfortable, but I don't know, it doesn't seem obviously dystopian to me. Like, I sincerely doubt that there's some suit at some American company that uses Indian call centers thinking MUAHAHAH, NOW I CAN USE FILIPINO CALL CENTERS INSTEAD OF INDIAN CALL CENTERS AND MY FOOLISH AMERICAN CUSTOMERS WILL BE NONE THE WISER!
And of course I have absolutely zero doubt that there are a lot of assholes who take things out on call center people who they have a hard time understanding, or even that they just perceive as different. But:
(1) I am not such a person, but even so, it's not infrequent that I really do have a hard time understanding a call center person I've been connected to. It's frustrating, even though I know not to take it out on the call center person themselves. I'm calling this place to get help, because ABC Corp's crappy product is crappy, and ABC Corp decides to route me to someone who I genuinely have to struggle to communicate with? C'mon, of course I'm going to be annoyed.
(2) For the call center people, I imagine that having assholes who you are trying to help angrily yell at you because they can't understand you is a thoroughly unpleasant experience, especially when it's (likely) a constant occurrence for you.
posted by Flunkie at 7:31 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
And of course I have absolutely zero doubt that there are a lot of assholes who take things out on call center people who they have a hard time understanding, or even that they just perceive as different. But:
(1) I am not such a person, but even so, it's not infrequent that I really do have a hard time understanding a call center person I've been connected to. It's frustrating, even though I know not to take it out on the call center person themselves. I'm calling this place to get help, because ABC Corp's crappy product is crappy, and ABC Corp decides to route me to someone who I genuinely have to struggle to communicate with? C'mon, of course I'm going to be annoyed.
(2) For the call center people, I imagine that having assholes who you are trying to help angrily yell at you because they can't understand you is a thoroughly unpleasant experience, especially when it's (likely) a constant occurrence for you.
posted by Flunkie at 7:31 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is great actually because if spammers, scammers and call center drones all sound like daft transatlantic robots then legit folks with Indian and Filipino accents won't get caught in the default assumption.
posted by nickzoic at 9:00 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by nickzoic at 9:00 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
If the future is computerised Beastie Boys shouting at each other, like people-modems,
Clothes not FRESH
clothes not CLEAN
got to ag-i-TATE
like a washing MA-CHINE!
posted by praemunire at 9:15 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Clothes not FRESH
clothes not CLEAN
got to ag-i-TATE
like a washing MA-CHINE!
posted by praemunire at 9:15 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Thinking this through a bit, I wonder if this could be used in reverse. The caller listens to the untouched voice of the call center employee, but the call center employee hears the generated voice.
Considering how unpleasant some people can be to call center employees with thick accents, I could see technology that replaces a voice with a snide, condescending tone with a generic one would be a tremendous blessing. Heck, give the call center person the ability to turn it on or off at will (if the tone starts to sour).
And why keep it with a generic American accent? They could make it sound like toddler speak, or Scottish, or like Donald Duck. Or Daffy Duck.
posted by neuracnu at 9:55 PM on September 4, 2022 [7 favorites]
Considering how unpleasant some people can be to call center employees with thick accents, I could see technology that replaces a voice with a snide, condescending tone with a generic one would be a tremendous blessing. Heck, give the call center person the ability to turn it on or off at will (if the tone starts to sour).
And why keep it with a generic American accent? They could make it sound like toddler speak, or Scottish, or like Donald Duck. Or Daffy Duck.
posted by neuracnu at 9:55 PM on September 4, 2022 [7 favorites]
I think if they were to use it in reverse, it would (or at least should) be to make the call center employee understand the customer more easily.
posted by Flunkie at 10:41 PM on September 4, 2022
posted by Flunkie at 10:41 PM on September 4, 2022
Brainstorm on RTE.ie this morning about Baader-Meinhof how accent intersects with employment; and amending existing equality law to include accent-discrimination.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:40 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:40 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
Just to note that not all BIPOC/people from non-Anglophone countries would find this a positive: I have an accent that is not-US, not-UK. People often find it hard to understand me. I find the idea of using this tool (as a consumer) horrific. What else would I need to change about myself to find it easier to get by in cultures that are already hegemonic?
I also think it's horrific that instead of refusing the business of anyone who is abusive we expect call centre employees to change their names and accents to become more palatable to xenophobes, but that's modern capitalism for you, I suppose.
posted by tavegyl at 12:44 AM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
I also think it's horrific that instead of refusing the business of anyone who is abusive we expect call centre employees to change their names and accents to become more palatable to xenophobes, but that's modern capitalism for you, I suppose.
posted by tavegyl at 12:44 AM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
Will future generations of sophisticated AI realtime voice translators have an option to simulate the speaker's accent?
posted by fairmettle at 4:40 AM on September 5, 2022
posted by fairmettle at 4:40 AM on September 5, 2022
My speaking to international people is already TV American - hilariously once a Scottish girl said she thought I was Canadian because I was 'polite'. But the accent discrimination is real - all it takes is removing me from my context (where my English is unremarkable) and I get Americans complimenting my English, even if as aielen says, it's not exactly an ESL language for me.
But I can't maintain this faux Yankee accent when I'm nervous, I revert to standard colonial which is Very English but like it or not, if I have to call a helpline (in the West), that's the accent that works out the best for me.
posted by cendawanita at 5:32 AM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
But I can't maintain this faux Yankee accent when I'm nervous, I revert to standard colonial which is Very English but like it or not, if I have to call a helpline (in the West), that's the accent that works out the best for me.
posted by cendawanita at 5:32 AM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
Brainstorm on RTE.ie this morning about how accent intersects with employment; and amending existing equality law to include accent-discrimination
Strictly within the realm of Anglophonia, going through the piece only highlights to me this is something we in the official British Commonwealth have a lot in common with the Irish, in terms of grappling having to have our own identities as owners of our own English but also the inherited racism against our own accents especially as it's a useful marker of class of which one criteria is the proximity to the English. At least the Irish at large is aware how odious it is. My people... Well, the UK public seems to *really* love Uncle Roger and his racist affect. But let's listen to how Nigel Ng really sounds in white company.
posted by cendawanita at 5:50 AM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Strictly within the realm of Anglophonia, going through the piece only highlights to me this is something we in the official British Commonwealth have a lot in common with the Irish, in terms of grappling having to have our own identities as owners of our own English but also the inherited racism against our own accents especially as it's a useful marker of class of which one criteria is the proximity to the English. At least the Irish at large is aware how odious it is. My people... Well, the UK public seems to *really* love Uncle Roger and his racist affect. But let's listen to how Nigel Ng really sounds in white company.
posted by cendawanita at 5:50 AM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’m not sure how I feel about this - I don’t think it will fix anything, but if it smoothes down the customer-dissatisfaction level at all so that it makes it easier for call center workers to do their jobs, it has to be a good thing.
I think for a lot of people, when you call CS about a problem and get someone in what’s clearly a majority non-English-speaking country, the accent isn’t an ethnic flashpoint as much as it is a signal that you may now have a second problem on your hands. Depending on how low the company in question pays to outsource its workers, the person who is putatively there to help you may not understand you, may not be understandable themselves, and almost certainly doesn’t have access to anyone who cares about your problem if they can’t fix it according to their response flow tree. Because if your problems mattered to the company, it wouldn’t have shunted off dealing with them overseas. A company with call center employees who can speak English and - more importantly - can actually fix problems, wouldn’t need this product, accents be damned. You call, your problem gets fixed, you’re done.
It’s all the extra “I’m sorry”s that don’t mean I’m sorry that make me nuts - for the misunderstanding, for being unable to understand you, for having to rephrase to be more clear, on top of all the ones for reiterating why the system is set up to not let you do the thing you need to get done through the system. And that’s including me saying I’m sorry for misunderstanding and not being understood as well. It’s not their fault. Call center jobs are awful and being yelled at by someone who can’t or won’t understand you has to be the worst (I’m not a yeller, and I’m always trying to keep the exasperation level down, but I know they’re out there). All people calling want is to get the thing done. Replacing skilled labor with cheap labor means the thing is less likely to be done easily, or well, or sometimes at all. Contracting employees means nobody is responsible anyway.
If this AI works, it will be a way to differentiate the companies that generally don’t care from the ones that can’t be bothered to care at all.
posted by Mchelly at 7:31 AM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
I think for a lot of people, when you call CS about a problem and get someone in what’s clearly a majority non-English-speaking country, the accent isn’t an ethnic flashpoint as much as it is a signal that you may now have a second problem on your hands. Depending on how low the company in question pays to outsource its workers, the person who is putatively there to help you may not understand you, may not be understandable themselves, and almost certainly doesn’t have access to anyone who cares about your problem if they can’t fix it according to their response flow tree. Because if your problems mattered to the company, it wouldn’t have shunted off dealing with them overseas. A company with call center employees who can speak English and - more importantly - can actually fix problems, wouldn’t need this product, accents be damned. You call, your problem gets fixed, you’re done.
It’s all the extra “I’m sorry”s that don’t mean I’m sorry that make me nuts - for the misunderstanding, for being unable to understand you, for having to rephrase to be more clear, on top of all the ones for reiterating why the system is set up to not let you do the thing you need to get done through the system. And that’s including me saying I’m sorry for misunderstanding and not being understood as well. It’s not their fault. Call center jobs are awful and being yelled at by someone who can’t or won’t understand you has to be the worst (I’m not a yeller, and I’m always trying to keep the exasperation level down, but I know they’re out there). All people calling want is to get the thing done. Replacing skilled labor with cheap labor means the thing is less likely to be done easily, or well, or sometimes at all. Contracting employees means nobody is responsible anyway.
If this AI works, it will be a way to differentiate the companies that generally don’t care from the ones that can’t be bothered to care at all.
posted by Mchelly at 7:31 AM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
A company with call center employees who can speak English and - more importantly - can actually fix problems, wouldn’t need this product, accents be damned.
Overseas call centers are staffed by people who speak English. It may not be your dialect or accent, but it's definitely English. The problem is, as you say, that they're often not in a position to actually fix anything, or even given enough information to be able to diagnose the actual problem if it deviates from the script at all. An unfamiliar dialect or accent over a dodgy connection doesn't help, but it's not a lack of language skills.
posted by hoyland at 4:30 AM on September 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
Overseas call centers are staffed by people who speak English. It may not be your dialect or accent, but it's definitely English. The problem is, as you say, that they're often not in a position to actually fix anything, or even given enough information to be able to diagnose the actual problem if it deviates from the script at all. An unfamiliar dialect or accent over a dodgy connection doesn't help, but it's not a lack of language skills.
posted by hoyland at 4:30 AM on September 6, 2022 [6 favorites]
Because if your problems mattered to the company, it wouldn’t have shunted off dealing with them overseas.
I think this sums it up for me, right there.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:54 AM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think this sums it up for me, right there.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:54 AM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
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WTF, this headline is in a UK publication.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]