Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank recently announced that it has been developing “Emotion-canceling” technology powered by AI that will alter the voices of angry customers to sound calmer during phone calls with customer service representatives. The publication quoted Skype customer service contractor Christine Stewart as saying, “One person called me the C-word. I’d call my supervisor. They’d say, ‘Calm them down.’ They’d always try to push me to stay on the call and calm the customer down myself. I wasn’t getting paid enough to do that. When you have a customer sitting there and saying you’re worthless you’re supposed to ‘de-escalate.’”. Verbally de-escalating an angry customer is difficult, according to Reddit poster BenCelotil, who wrote, “As someone who has worked in several call centers, let me just point out that there is no way faster to escalate a call than to try and calm the person down. If the angry person on the other end of the call thinks you’re just trying to placate and push them off somewhere else, they’re only getting more pissed.”

Source: Softbank plans to cancel out angry customer voices using AI