Call center employees may find it quite unpleasant to deal with angry consumers, but Japan’s SoftBank Corp. believes it has a solution: software with artificial intelligence that softens the tone of clients’ voices.
Good customer relations through AI
By the end of March 2026, the third-largest telecom service provider in the nation hopes to have commercialized the technology after a year of internal and external testing.
The bank is working on the development of a new solution that can convert the customer’s voice into a calm conversational tone and deliver it to workers using AI-enabled emotion recognition and voice processing technology, SoftBank announced on Wednesday.
To convert customers’ voices into a calm conversational tone before it is delivered to the workers, the bank is working on a new solution using AI-enabled emotion recognition and voice-pressing technology, SoftBank announced on Wednesday.
SoftBank announced its first quarter earnings report two days ago and reported a profit of $2.11 billion (328.9 billion yen). The bank hopes that better customer service through AI will help boost business.
The SoftBank subsidiary Arm Holdings, a British chip designer that the company hopes can spur innovation in artificial intelligence throughout its portfolio of businesses, is attracting more and more attention from investors.
Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Yoshimitsu Goto stated at a press conference in Tokyo that,
“Arm is at the core of SoftBank Group’s AI shift, which will create a new ecosystem along with the various assets we’ve held for a long time that are using AI, centered on the Vision Fund.”
SoftBank looks at workers’ well-being along with that of customers
SoftBank noted in a statement that,
“With this solution, we aim to maintain good relationships with customers through sound communication while ensuring the psychological welfare of our workers.”
Source: Reuters.
Though harassment of employees in the service industry is a problem that has gained increased attention in recent years, Japan takes pride in its excellent standards of customer service. To improve worker protection, the government is considering passing laws.
About half of the 33,000 participants in this year’s poll conducted by UA Zensen, a labor union representing workers primarily in the retail and service sectors, reported having been harassed by clients in the previous two years.
Among the occurrences were threats, verbal abuse, and, in certain cases, requests from customers for employees to kneel and bow in apology. In response to the harassment, over 100 respondents indicated they had sought out mental assistance.
