SoftBank will use AI to soften the voices of angry customers in call centers

Dealing with angry customers can be extremely stressful for call center employees, but the Japanese operator SoftBank Corp believes it has a solution: artificial intelligence software that softens the tone of customers' voices.

Japan’s third-largest telecommunications provider plans to start testing the technology internally and externally next year and aims to commercialize it by the end of March 2026.

“We are working on developing a solution that can convert a customer's voice into a calm conversational tone and deliver it to our employees using AI-driven emotion recognition and voice processing technology,” the company said.

“With this solution, our goal is to maintain a good relationship with customers through strong communication while ensuring the psychological well-being of our employees.”

Japan takes pride in its high standard of customer service, but the issue of harassment against workers in the service industry has gained more attention in recent years. The Japanese government is considering legislation to strengthen worker protections in the sector.

Around half of the 33,000 respondents in a survey conducted this year by UA Zensen, a labor union primarily representing service and retail workers, said they had experienced harassment from customers in the past two years.

Incidents included verbal abuse, intimidation, and, in some cases, even demands from customers for workers to kneel and bow in apology.

More than 100 respondents said they had sought psychiatric help as a result of the harassment.

Source: CNN

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