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Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims will make them more understandable.
The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancellation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. Teleperformance provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc., ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
“When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard to hear, to understand,” Deputy-Chief Executive Officer Thomas Mackenbrock said in an interview with Bloomberg. The technology can “neutralize the accent of the Indian speaker with zero latency,” he said. This “creates more intimacy, increases the customer satisfaction, and reduces the average handling time: it is a win-win for both parties.”
The company declined to disclose which clients are using the technology.
Teleperformance is forecasting 3% to 5% revenue growth this year, it said in the earnings statement published Thursday. Still, analysts were disappointed by the company’s weak margin outlook: the company expects earnings before interest, taxes and amortization to be flat or up by just 0.1%.
Shares fell more than 10% at 9:54 a.m. in Paris on Friday, after earlier falling as much as 16%. JPMorgan analyst Sylvia Barker wrote that “margin missed expectations despite higher-than anticipated synergies.”
The roll-out of accent translation is part of a bigger push by Teleperformance to invest up to €100 million ($104 million) in AI partnerships this year, the company said in an earnings statement on Thursday. The technology was developed by Palo Alto-based startup Sanas, in which Teleperformance invested $13 million earlier this year. Under the terms of the deal, Teleperformance becomes the exclusive reseller of Sanas’ technology to its clients.
