Almost every time I get a call from TELUS about a new service or promotion, it’s someone from the Philippines or India. A lot of them speak English fluently, but the accent and phrasing can be pretty different from what I’m used to, and I don’t always catch everything they’re saying. Sometimes I feel like I’m guessing a big chunk of the conversation, which makes me not want to engage, especially on sales calls.
It matters more when I’m the one calling them for billing or technical support. In those cases, clarity really counts, and it can get frustrating when I have to keep asking for repeats or try to piece things together.
Honestly, I’d love something like this for my own speech too. I’m Japanese and have a fairly strong accent, and it would be nice if people could understand me more easily without having to guess.
Changing an accent doesn’t change the content the person on the other end receives it with. Most of my issues with overseas support is that they have no real context for my problem. It’s not just a language barrier, it’s a culture barrier.
When calling support in my own country it is much faster and easier, because they intuitively understand the type of issue I’m having and can better relate. I question if changing the voice would make it more frustrating, as I’d have similar issues without the obvious explanation as to why it’s happening.
Regardless of tech you can always improve your speech. I had a Japanese girlfriend who went through the process and 80% of the results where accomplished by learning the ~20 vowel sounds found in American english (vs her native 5 vowel sounds).
Comcast (Xfinity) is doing this too. I was absolutely convinced I was talking to an artificial voice the the human-like capabilities of that voice to respond were far beyond what I'd expect out of LLMs. I think it must have just been done to hide the accent.
Oh! Dear Lord. I still want to hear my Indian friends speak Indian to me during Support Calls. These days, I’m hearing American accents trying to calm me down over my complaints on that excess masala in the idli-dosa-pav-bhaji butteerr-chicken combo in the El Camino Eatery in the outskirts of Jhalandar.
Anytime one of those "you can eat cuisine from one region of the world for the rest of your life" memes comes up, I'm baffled that anybody would fail to pick the region that contains both South and Southeast Asia.
I had a contractor group come highly recommended, but I literally had to focus so hard on each word that I couldn’t make it work. I don’t know where they were from but I heard easier to understand accents in Delhi.
I realized quickly how it was changing my thinking process to devote so much to each word.
Almost every time I get a call from TELUS about a new service or promotion, it’s someone from the Philippines or India. A lot of them speak English fluently, but the accent and phrasing can be pretty different from what I’m used to, and I don’t always catch everything they’re saying. Sometimes I feel like I’m guessing a big chunk of the conversation, which makes me not want to engage, especially on sales calls.
It matters more when I’m the one calling them for billing or technical support. In those cases, clarity really counts, and it can get frustrating when I have to keep asking for repeats or try to piece things together.
Honestly, I’d love something like this for my own speech too. I’m Japanese and have a fairly strong accent, and it would be nice if people could understand me more easily without having to guess.
When calling support in my own country it is much faster and easier, because they intuitively understand the type of issue I’m having and can better relate. I question if changing the voice would make it more frustrating, as I’d have similar issues without the obvious explanation as to why it’s happening.
As soon as I hear the "Mr Firstname and how are you today?" I hang up.
Call spammers have not worked out that a formal polite greeting is a big giveaway.
Related last year:
AI Accent Conversion for call centers (48 points, 70 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43514141
Call centres using AI to 'whiten' Indian accents (8+6 points, 0+6 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43246376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43292311
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/2c42fdd7045b26c60c180ca...
a sweet korma, or a vindaloo are my most favorite.
My current company is global and while everyone can speak English well sometimes accents make it almost impossible to communicate.
Scam calls sounding "more legitimate" because it passes the (unfortunately racist) filters most people have.
I realized quickly how it was changing my thinking process to devote so much to each word.