How AI-Powered Real-Time Accent Translation is Revolutionizing the Contact Center Industry

“Could you say that again?... I can’t understand you.”

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This is perhaps the most dreaded question for contact center agents.

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Whenever we hear accented English, we're listening to a unique story that reflects the diverse cultures of its speakers worldwide. Over 1.5 billion people speak English globally, and there are about 160 different recognized accents. With global agent populations being a prime example of diverse accents, this poses challenges in hiring, training, call quality, feeling understood, and effective communication on a day-to-day basis in their work.

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For decades, companies have utilized agent talent for customer support operations in locations like Philippines, India, and Latin America for many strategic reasons including talent availability, lower costs, and to address both growth and slow down in the global economy. While AI is being used to automate many things in CX, there is little debate that there will continue to be demand for voice-based, human-to-human customer support and using AI to improve communication is smart, easy to implement, and produces virtually immediate results.

Customer journey transformation is happening now

AI is driving the greatest transformational change in the 45-year history of customer support. The role of the agent is already becoming more important, more complex, and requires higher skill levels than ever before. AI will impact virtually every aspect of the CX cycle and customer journey including hiring, training and coaching, communication and productivity, optimization, and security.

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Companies of all sizes have decisions to make on what AI tools and capabilities they will deploy across the CX cycle to maximize the satisfaction and loyalty of its customers in the most efficient and cost-effective ways possible. Sanas is at the heart of this journey, improving communication and productivity. Sanas uniquely solves the challenges of miscommunication, decreased customer satisfaction, and unfair treatment of agents that arise due to accent bias. The benefit of the Sanas platform comes in three phases:

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• Immediate improvement in the customer experience: There is an innate need for every human to be understood and when an agent knows they will be understood, they are confident and the caller knows that their problem will be solved better and faster. The improved results in NPS and CSAT are virtually immediate.
  
  
• Effect on productivity, customer loyalty, and customer retention: The impact of fewer disconnects, fewer transfers, and calls that are smoother due to clearer understanding from the start will produce fewer negative experiences reducing customer churn, reducing AHT, and turning a cost center into a revenue generating center.
  
  
• Agent happiness and hiring talent that previously were disqualified: Companies invest significantly in amenities and programs in order to be a great place to work for agents. Eliminating the part of an agent’s job that creates the most anxiety and stress could be the best investment to-date and result in improved agent retention by 39%. Additionally, high morale can boost efficiency, as happy employees tend to be more productive and engaged. They will stay longer at the company, and greater tenured agents are always your high performers. Finally, imagine the ability to hire agents that have all the prerequisite skills and talent, but lack English proficiency; they can now participate in the global CX economy for the first time.
   

Real-time Accent Translation technology can significantly address the challenges of accent bias and miscommunications in contact centers, and enhance communication. This technology helps overcome communication barriers, reduces misunderstandings, and ensures fair treatment of employees. 

Components of Sanas Accent Translation:

Sanas Accent Translation not only enables agents to be better understood regardless of their accent, but it has several other Speech Understanding solutions built in to enable customers to understand agents from different backgrounds and locations better: 
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Noise Elimination: Sanas Accent Translation technology uses a unique learning process to block out distractions and focus on the speaker's voice, making sure the message comes through clearly.

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Voice Enhancement: Sanas uses advanced AI and audio technology to improve voice quality. This makes the speaker's voice always sound clear and confident.

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Speech Intelligibility: Sanas Accent Translation doesn't just change speech – it transforms it. Using advanced technology, it creates speech that is extremely clear and easy to understand.

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Speech Naturalness: The speech-to-speech neural network picks up on the small details of human speech, like tone and emphasis, making sure the message sounds naturally warm and genuine.

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Voice Authenticity: Sanas retains the speaker’s personal voice. Trained on a massive database of millions of utterances, the result is speech that is unique to the speaker, every time.

Enhancing clarity in communications

A leader in AI speech technology with real-time Accent Translation that keeps emotion and tone intact plus built-in noise elimination, our tech stack:

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• Enables faster GTM as it can be implemented in minutes
• Offers real-time support and overcomes network challenges
• Supports real-time accent translation with minimal latency
• Enables hiring from diverse backgrounds
• Eliminates the need for permanent and costly accent training
• Comes embedded with background noise cancellation
• Keeps the natural sound of the speaker

Contact centers with Sanas

But you don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s what Michael Mahar, SVP Tech & Digital Services, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, has to say about Sanas adoption: 

“Sanas's pioneering technology aligns perfectly with Wyndham’s broader efforts to be genuinely customer-centric, breaking down communication barriers and ensuring that every interaction feels personal, effortless, and engaging.”
-Michael Mahar, SVP Tech & Digital Services, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

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If you are leading a team of agents or heading contact center operations, this is your chance to implement advanced AI technology to retain the natural tone and nuances of your agents’ speech, bridge cultural and linguistic gaps, and improve customer satisfaction and agent morale.

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Book a demo to help your contact center agents speak to global customers confidently and clearly while retaining their native accents. Make communication more inclusive and effective, foster trust and credibility, and ultimately transform your contact center experience.

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Book your demo today!‍