Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable.
The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
“When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard to hear, to understand,” deputy CEO Thomas Mackenbrock said.
Photo: Bloomberg
The technology can “neutralize the accent of the Indian speaker with zero latency,” he said.
That “creates more intimacy, increases the customer satisfaction, and reduces the average handling time: It is a win-win for both parties,” he added.
The company declined to disclose which clients are using the technology.
Teleperformance is forecasting 3 to 5 percent revenue growth this year, it said in the earnings statement published on 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 percent.
Shares fell 7.52 percent at close in Paris on Friday, after earlier falling as much as 16 percent.
JPMorgan analyst Sylvia Barker wrote that “margin missed expectations despite higher-than anticipated synergies.”
The rollout of accent translation is part of a bigger push by Teleperformance to invest up to 100 million euros (US$103.78 million) in AI partnerships this year, the company said in an earnings statement on Thursday.
The technology was developed by Palo Alto-based start-up Sanas, in which Teleperformance invested US$13 million earlier this year. Under the terms of the deal, Teleperformance becomes the exclusive reseller of Sanas’ technology to its clients.
The rise of AI chatbots has led to investor jitters about the sustainability of the human call-center model. Last year, Teleperformance shares fell to their lowest since late 2016 after Swedish fintech company Klarna Bank AB said its AI assistant, powered by OpenAI, was doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.
Teleperformance has sought to allay shareholder concerns by using AI to enhance rather than replace employees, which totaled 490,000 as of the end of 2023.
The French company is using AI across the business, including using AI copilots to coach new employees and transcribing calls for quality control.
Sanas, the firm that Teleperformance is using to offer this accent-softening service to clients, is one of the AI upstarts blurring the line between where generative AI tech starts and the human ends.
The firm’s software also eliminates background noise — such as crowing roosters, ambulance sirens and office chatter. That might sound like an aid to agents, rather than a tool that might displace them, but it carries a risk for customer service bases such as the Philippines that built market-leading positions by cultivating a preponderance of high-quality English speakers.
The tools might also be perceived as taking away from workers’ cultural identities and the authenticity of conversations.
Sanas said it developed the technology with a goal of “reducing accent-based discrimination,” its Web site says.
The technology is available for Indian and Filipino accents and is being tuned for other regions, including Latin America, where Teleperformance has many workers supporting US-based customers, Mackenbrock said.
“AI will be ubiquitous; it is already today,” Mackenbrock said. “But in order to build connections, customer experience, branding awareness, the human element will be incredibly important.”
Earlier this month, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski wrote on X that the company “just had an epiphany,” saying that “in a world of AI nothing will be as valuable as humans.”
Klarna would continue to invest in its AI support, but use cost savings to make sure that “the human service part of Klarna becomes even better,” he added.
Teleperformance is also making a push to provide services to the tech giants building AI models, Mackenbrock said.
“Whether it is OpenAI, or any AI model in the world, it needs human support for training,” he said.
That includes creating, testing and labeling data.
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
‘FAILED EXPORT CONTROLS’: Jensen Huang said that Washington should maximize the speed of AI diffusion, because not doing so would give competitors an advantage Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday criticized the US government’s restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, saying that the policy was a failure and would only spur China to accelerate AI development. The export controls gave China the spirit, motivation and government support to accelerate AI development, Huang told reporters at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The competition in China is already intense, given its strong software capabilities, extensive technology ecosystems and work efficiency, he said. “All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” he said. “The US
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed gratitude to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) for its plan to invest approximately 250 million euros (US$278 million) in a joint venture in France focused on the semiconductor and space industries. On his official X account on Tuesday, Macron thanked Hon Hai, also known globally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), for its investment projects announced at Choose France, a flagship economic summit held on Monday to attract foreign investment. In the post, Macron included a GIF displaying the national flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as he did for other foreign investors, including China-based