autotldr@lemmings.world
on 18 Jun 20:05
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According to a report from the Japanese news site The Asahi Shimbun, SoftBankâs project relies on an AI model to alter the tone and pitch of a customerâs voice in real-time during a phone call.
SoftBankâs developers, led by employee Toshiyuki Nakatani, trained the system using a dataset of over 10,000 voice samples, which were performed by 10 Japanese actors expressing more than 100 phrases with various emotions, including yelling and accusatory tones.
By analyzing the voice samples, SoftBankâs AI model has reportedly learned to recognize and modify the vocal characteristics associated with anger and hostility.
In a Reddit thread on Softbankâs AI plans, call center operators from other regions related many stories about the stress of dealing with customer harassment.
Harassment of call center workers is a very real problem, but given the introduction of AI as a possible solution, some people wonder whether itâs a good idea to essentially filter emotional reality on demand through voice synthesis.
By reducing the psychological burden on call center operators, SoftBank says it hopes to create a safer work environment that enables employees to provide even better services to customers.
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Saved 78% of original text.
This is giving me Black Mirror vibes. Like when that ladyâs consciousness got put into a teddy bear, and she only had two ways to express herself:
Monkey wants a hug
Monkey loves you
I get that you shouldnât go off on customer service reps (the reason youâre angry is never their fault), but filtering out the emotion/intonation in your voice is a bridge too far.
Most of the time angry customers donât even understand what theyâre angry at. Theyâll 180 in a heartbeat if the agent can identify the actual issue. I agree, this is unnecessary.
In college, I worked at a call center for one of the worst Banks of America (oops, meant banks in America đ). Can confirm that, and I dealt with a LOT of angry customers.
I did phones in a different century, so I donât know whether this would fly today. But, my go-to for someone like this was âok, I think I see the problem here. Shall we go ahead and fix it or do you need to do more yelling first?â
I canât remember that line ever not shutting them down instantly. I never took it personally, whatever they had going on they were never angry at me personally.
Then again, I do remember firing a couple of customers (âwe donât want your business any more etcâ) after I later became a manager and people were abusive to staff. So you could be right, also.
In my country, 99% of the time you contact technical support, a poorly made bot responds (actually it is a while loop) with ambiguous and pre-written answers, and the only way to talk to a human is directly by going to the place in question, so nothing to worry about that here.
I donât think it seems like too few samples for it to work.
What they train for is rather specific. To identify anger and hostility characteristics, and adjust pitch and inflection.
Dunno if you meant it like that when you said âtraining peopleâs voicesâ, but theyâre not replicating voices or interpreting meaning.
learned to recognize and modify the vocal characteristics associated with anger and hostility. When a customer speaks to a call center operator, the model processes the incoming audio and adjusts the pitch and inflection of the customerâs voice to make it sound calmer and less threatening.
blindsight@beehaw.org
on 18 Jun 23:36
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This seems like it might work really well. Weâve evolved to be social creatures, and internalizing the emotions of others is literally baked into our DNA (mirror neurons), so filtering out the emotional ânoiseâ from customers seems, to me, like a brilliant way to improve the working conditions for call centre workers.
Itâs not like you canât also tell the emotional tone of the caller based on the words theyâre saying, and the call centre employees will know that voices are being changed.
Also, Iâm not so sure about reporting on anonymous Redditor comments as the basis for journalism. I know why itâs done, but Iâd rather hear what a trained psychologist has to say about this, yâknow?
The biggest problem I see with this is the scenario where calls are recorded. Theyâre recorded in case we hit a âhe said, she saidâ scenario. If some issue were to be escalated as far as a courtroom, the value of the recording to the business is greatly diminished.
Even if the words the call agent gets are 100% verbatim, a lawyer can easily argue that a significant percentage of the message is in tone of voice. If thatâs lost and the agent misses a nuance of the customerâs intent, theyâll have a solid case against the business.
Besides providing verbatim records of who said what, there is a second can of worms in forming any sort of binding agreement if the two sides of the agreement are having two different conversations.
I think this is what the part about the missed nuance means.
AlexanderESmith@social.alexanderesmith.com
on 19 Jun 05:30
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This is fucked.
I worked in call centers for many years (technical support and sales). I need to hear the customer's tone; ecstatic, livid, and everything in between. I sit on the other end, shut my mouth, and listen to the whole rant, then calmly offer suggestions. Do they scream some more? Maybe. Do I need to take it personally? Of course not.
It drives me fucking crazy when some dipshit customer service rep hears one swear word (not even directed at them, like "I hate this fuckin' thing", not "you're a fuckin' dumbass") and start in on the "if you keep swearing at me, I'll end the call". Grow up, you work in a service industry, and your company probably fucked up.
My favorite calls were the ones where someone called to cancel and tore up their voice yelling about all the reasons our product was gabrage. Very, very roughly, about 15% of the time there was nothing I could do (even if I fixed the problem, they have lost faith and will get their money back, or sue trying, so I just refund and move on). Another 25% was me fixing the problem and offering a credit because we fucked up. About half the time, its something stupid and simple and they get their problem solved, and the rest of the time was some absolutely crazy broken shit that makes me work with someone two tiers above me for a few hours fixing it (for everyone, not just that caller), then the customer is so happy they renew everything for a year because they know they're gonna get great support.
I loved those calls. They were the reason I kept showing up to work. I learned a ton in those jobs, and my favorite thing was hearing someone go from completely apoplectic to surprised and elated that everything was fixed.
If theyâre going to do this, then customers can get support via text messaging right? Theyâre not going to have to call in to talk to a computer to have their voice turned into text for an agent right?
This isnât about asymmetrically wasting the time of the customer so they donât call support at all, right?
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According to a report from the Japanese news site The Asahi Shimbun, SoftBankâs project relies on an AI model to alter the tone and pitch of a customerâs voice in real-time during a phone call. SoftBankâs developers, led by employee Toshiyuki Nakatani, trained the system using a dataset of over 10,000 voice samples, which were performed by 10 Japanese actors expressing more than 100 phrases with various emotions, including yelling and accusatory tones. By analyzing the voice samples, SoftBankâs AI model has reportedly learned to recognize and modify the vocal characteristics associated with anger and hostility. In a Reddit thread on Softbankâs AI plans, call center operators from other regions related many stories about the stress of dealing with customer harassment. Harassment of call center workers is a very real problem, but given the introduction of AI as a possible solution, some people wonder whether itâs a good idea to essentially filter emotional reality on demand through voice synthesis. By reducing the psychological burden on call center operators, SoftBank says it hopes to create a safer work environment that enables employees to provide even better services to customers. â Saved 78% of original text.
This is giving me Black Mirror vibes. Like when that ladyâs consciousness got put into a teddy bear, and she only had two ways to express herself:
I get that you shouldnât go off on customer service reps (the reason youâre angry is never their fault), but filtering out the emotion/intonation in your voice is a bridge too far.
Most of the time angry customers donât even understand what theyâre angry at. Theyâll 180 in a heartbeat if the agent can identify the actual issue. I agree, this is unnecessary.
Yep, 100%.
In college, I worked at a call center for one of the worst Banks of America (oops, meant banks in America đ). Can confirm that, and I dealt with a LOT of angry customers.
Based on my experience working in a call center, I wouldnât call it unnecessary. People are fucked up.
I did phones in a different century, so I donât know whether this would fly today. But, my go-to for someone like this was âok, I think I see the problem here. Shall we go ahead and fix it or do you need to do more yelling first?â
I canât remember that line ever not shutting them down instantly. I never took it personally, whatever they had going on they were never angry at me personally.
Then again, I do remember firing a couple of customers (âwe donât want your business any more etcâ) after I later became a manager and people were abusive to staff. So you could be right, also.
Haha while I love the line, that last part would quickly get you pulled into a talk with management.
I would laugh, and then tell you to never do that again.
Itâs not an easy job, and it can absolutely be rough and frustrating. But knowing what your customer is saying is pretty important.
Interacting with people whose tone doesnât match their words may induce anxiety as well.
Have they actually proven this is a good idea, or is this a âso preoccupied with whether or not they couldâ scenario?
Itâs businesses âthrowing AI into stuffâ, so Iâm going to say itâs a safe bet itâs the latter.
Itâs probably the Jurassic Park effect
In my country, 99% of the time you contact technical support, a poorly made bot responds (actually it is a while loop) with ambiguous and pre-written answers, and the only way to talk to a human is directly by going to the place in question, so nothing to worry about that here.
So what youâre saying is that we need AI do interface in-store as well? /s
Am I crazy or is 10,000 samples nowhere near enough for training peopleâs voices?
If you have pre-trained model or a classical voice matching algorithm as the basis, few samples might suffice.
I donât think it seems like too few samples for it to work.
What they train for is rather specific. To identify anger and hostility characteristics, and adjust pitch and inflection.
Dunno if you meant it like that when you said âtraining peopleâs voicesâ, but theyâre not replicating voices or interpreting meaning.
This seems like it might work really well. Weâve evolved to be social creatures, and internalizing the emotions of others is literally baked into our DNA (mirror neurons), so filtering out the emotional ânoiseâ from customers seems, to me, like a brilliant way to improve the working conditions for call centre workers.
Itâs not like you canât also tell the emotional tone of the caller based on the words theyâre saying, and the call centre employees will know that voices are being changed.
Also, Iâm not so sure about reporting on anonymous Redditor comments as the basis for journalism. I know why itâs done, but Iâd rather hear what a trained psychologist has to say about this, yâknow?
The biggest problem I see with this is the scenario where calls are recorded. Theyâre recorded in case we hit a âhe said, she saidâ scenario. If some issue were to be escalated as far as a courtroom, the value of the recording to the business is greatly diminished.
Even if the words the call agent gets are 100% verbatim, a lawyer can easily argue that a significant percentage of the message is in tone of voice. If thatâs lost and the agent misses a nuance of the customerâs intent, theyâll have a solid case against the business.
I see no problem: they can record the original call and postprocess it with AI live for the operators. The recordings would be the original audio.
Besides providing verbatim records of who said what, there is a second can of worms in forming any sort of binding agreement if the two sides of the agreement are having two different conversations.
I think this is what the part about the missed nuance means.
This is fucked.
I worked in call centers for many years (technical support and sales). I need to hear the customer's tone; ecstatic, livid, and everything in between. I sit on the other end, shut my mouth, and listen to the whole rant, then calmly offer suggestions. Do they scream some more? Maybe. Do I need to take it personally? Of course not.
It drives me fucking crazy when some dipshit customer service rep hears one swear word (not even directed at them, like "I hate this fuckin' thing", not "you're a fuckin' dumbass") and start in on the "if you keep swearing at me, I'll end the call". Grow up, you work in a service industry, and your company probably fucked up.
My favorite calls were the ones where someone called to cancel and tore up their voice yelling about all the reasons our product was gabrage. Very, very roughly, about 15% of the time there was nothing I could do (even if I fixed the problem, they have lost faith and will get their money back, or sue trying, so I just refund and move on). Another 25% was me fixing the problem and offering a credit because we fucked up. About half the time, its something stupid and simple and they get their problem solved, and the rest of the time was some absolutely crazy broken shit that makes me work with someone two tiers above me for a few hours fixing it (for everyone, not just that caller), then the customer is so happy they renew everything for a year because they know they're gonna get great support.
I loved those calls. They were the reason I kept showing up to work. I learned a ton in those jobs, and my favorite thing was hearing someone go from completely apoplectic to surprised and elated that everything was fixed.
If theyâre going to do this, then customers can get support via text messaging right? Theyâre not going to have to call in to talk to a computer to have their voice turned into text for an agent right?
This isnât about asymmetrically wasting the time of the customer so they donât call support at all, right?
I think I get what the article is saying, but all I can imagine is Siri calmly reading to me the vilest insults ever written.
Dang, swearing was one of my strategies to get the bot to forward me to a representative