[nunez]

I think it's dehumanizing. Yes, they have accents. English isn't their first language. TELUS decided to move jobs they could have given to Canadians offshore to save a buck or two. We're already conditioned to treat service reps like punching bags; now we're literally taking away their voices and further devaluing them. Not okay.

[throw0101c]

> We're already conditioned to treat service reps like punching bags; now we're literally taking away their voices and further devaluing them.

I've tried to keep the habit of talking about things in the third-person when I'm on the phone with someone: instead of saying "you messed up the billing" I say "BigCo messed up the billing".

It's a small mental reminder that it's not the fault of the person I just happen to be talking to.

[shermantanktop]

I just tell them “I know this not your fault.”

I worked in a call center. You quickly develop an emotional rhino hide or you won’t make it.

[jhanschoo]

I don't understand the locus of the arrangement/decision that you find dehumanizing. There are several distinct ways I perceive how someone might find aspects of such an arrangement and change of arrangement dehumanizing, and I shall list them out, though I may or may not subscribe to them (for the purpose of this comment, I am assuming Filipino call center contractors, though one may substitute in any other country where the population knows English and jobs are outsourced to):

- Is it dehumanizing to Filipinos that Filipinos probably now do their job more efficiently without having to learn an accent that they are not exposed to?

- Is it dehumanizing to Filipinos that they no longer enjoy having their accent heard as a externality of a counterfactual arrangement?

- Is it dehumanizing to the customers that the company does not expect their customers to be cosmopolitan enough to understand a foreign accent with ease?

- Is it dehumanizing to the customers that the customers are now more sensorily shielded from a current-day reality regarding globalized providers of service?

- Is it dehumanizing, not due to this decision itself; but the globalized arrangement, to Canadians that they cannot expect to hold such a job and get by in Canada? Or perhaps to Filipinos, that such a job might be low-paying in their own country (or in respect to non-domestic goods that need to be purchased from outside their polity)?

- Is it dehumanizing, regarding not this decision, but the offshoring decision, that such decisions can be made without consent by employees and contractors?

[Mordisquitos]

I am not impacted by this issue on either side, but I am in the "dehumanising" camp, so here are my opinions:

> Is it dehumanizing to Filipinos that Filipinos probably now do their job more efficiently without having to learn an accent that they are not exposed to?

It's already demeaning to expect them to "learn an accent", unless their job description is to literally pretend they are from a different culture (e.g. if they were actors). Introducing an "AI" middleman to change their voice is demeaning and dehumanising.

> Is it dehumanizing to Filipinos that they no longer enjoy having their accent heard as a externality of a counterfactual arrangement?

It is dehumanising to any person that their own human voice is no longer heard when performing a job involving human contact.

> Is it dehumanizing to the customers that the company does not expect their customers to be cosmopolitan enough to understand a foreign accent with ease?

Not quite dehumanising, but it is certainly patronising that the company has an opinion as to what voice their customers can or cannot understand. And if the company is hiring customer service agents whose accents are a serious hinderance to understanding, I would argue that their hires are not likely to accurately understand the very customers they are supposed to assist.

>Is it dehumanizing to the customers that the customers are now more sensorily shielded from a current-day reality regarding globalized providers of service?

Not dehumanising, but again patronising, and also disrespectful and borderline dishonest.

I won't get into the final two points, as those are prior to the accent-middleman "AI".

[harperlee]

> It's already demeaning to expect them to "learn an accent"

The concept of an accent is broad, but at least part of it you need to learn together with the language, as speaking a non-native language with a thick accent is partly based on the fact that you have yet to learn.

Without being exhaustive, things that might fall into the "speaks with an accent" concept in this thread:

   - Prosody. Prosody can vary per region but a distinctly alien prosody to a language is a barrier for the receptor of the message, that expects a given language and a range of prosodies. E.g. as I know french quite well, hearing english with a heavy french accent makes my brain try to understand what's being said as said in french, and interferes a lot.

   - Sound shifts for particular phonemes. While some of it might be local to the language in certain registers (idea --> /ide"er"/, three --> /free/), others are clearly issues in the target language pronunciation (eg. japanese people having trouble with the l phoneme, spanish people adding an /e/ sound prior to an s-mobile, or v versus b for spanish people also).

   - Connected speech. Where do you end words, how do you omit sounds, etc. Also massive hindrance to understanding.

   - Grammar. Alien grammar is a hindrance to communication. You need to learn that.

[lo_zamoyski]

> It's already demeaning to expect them to "learn an accent"

Uh, what? Excuse me?

The purpose of spoken language is communication. Accents can frustrate or enhance communication. In this case, conforming to the accent of the client enhances communication, because it is what the client is familiar with.

You do realize that the obligations of service are on the agent, right? It is the agent, as representative of the company providing a service, who is serving the client. If the aim of an agent is to assist a client, then using an accent that is more intelligible to the client is part of serving them.

You might as well claim that - given that language is part of culture - learning to speak another language at all is "pretending" that you're from a different culture. It's a ridiculous take.

> It is dehumanising to any person that their own human voice is no longer heard when performing a job involving human contact.

What does this even mean? What is your "own human voice" here? Accents are learned. They are conventional, even if they have objective properties that allow them to be compared. An agent's job isn't about him; it is about the client. It's not about "being heard" (whatever that means), but being understood by the client within the context of the purpose of the job.

Imagine if diplomats thought the way you do. Diplomats serve and represent their country, just as agents serve and represent their company. It is in the interest of the diplomat, his country, and the other party to communicate as effectively as possible with the other party.

> Not quite dehumanising, but it is certainly patronising that the company has an opinion as to what voice their customers can or cannot understand.

This, too, is nonsensical. Given that companies record calls, it is fair to assume that the company has statistical evidence concerning the accents of their agents and how well they're understood by their clients.

Now, if you want to criticize the use of AI in such cases on independent grounds, maybe you can make a case. I don't think it would be a very strong case, as this is such a trivial matter. But you cannot claim that learning accents is "dehumanizing". Accent is part of language. If you wish to communicate with a people, you need to speak a common language. That generally means learning their language. The better you speak that language, the better you can communicate with them. If you are serving, the burden is on you to speak in a way that can assist understanding. It's that simple.

[kelvinjps10]

But accent and pronunciation are different things, and the fact that you don't have a particular accent doesn't mean that you don't speak the language well, what matter most is pronunciation. Sometimes it can get ridiculous like when Trump had a interpreter for a guy that was native in English but had an accent or that other leader from africa that Trump asked where he learned English when it was it's native language. Coming back to accent is different than pronunciation, in any English test like IELTS or Cambridge accent won't be qualified

[jhanschoo]

> But accent and pronunciation are different things [...]

This isn't true in the way you are thinking of. An accent can pronounce words the same way that another accent distinguishes. An accent can pronounce word x that another accent pronounces word y. What comes to mind immediately: in Indian English accents, RP/GA fricative "th" is pronounced as the aspirate, while the RP/GA aspirated "t" is pronounced retroflex, so naively, "three" can be misheard as "tree".

The working-class accent that I use where I'm from (not India) is syllable-timed (stress does not lengthen the duration of a syllable), and uses pitch lexical stress, rather than intensity/loudness for it, and stress itself is frequently very differently located compared to RP or GA. For "th" as well, we collapse it into t/d.

All in all, for someone who has heard it for the first time or rarely, it can be extremely disorienting to listen to a very distant foreign accent.

[jakelazaroff]

I don't think you need to go that deep. This technology is literally dehumanizing: it's replacing individual human aspects of someone's voice with a computer-generated facsimile.

[jhanschoo]

By that same argument, taken naively, film and video are dehumanizing, but not deplorably so: certainly the intensity of emotion and experience through film is far less present than say immersive theater, but we may be more comfortable with this modality, and also, benefit from the economies of scale.

Similarly, a call center worker may not care about having their accent being heard, but wants to get their numbers up, without struggling with a customer that isn't familiar with their accent, and enjoys the ease of speaking in their own accent than having to use one that distant customers are accustomed to. Likewise a customer probably just wants their problem fixed, without the effort of getting accustomed to an accent that they rarely encounter. This meets your definition of deplorable, but analogous to the former scenario, perhaps not deplorably so.

[fennecbutt]

And photos steal a person's soul? Or something like that.

[nunez]

It's mostly the "voice smoothing" part of this technology that I have morality issues with.

This isn't any different from (usually white) teachers telling (usually black) kids to "speak better" simply because they consider the way they speak "wrong." Or, since TELUS is in Canada, like the Residential school system [^0] that their First People were forced to attend that did the same thing.

I believe that your voice makes you _you_. Taking that away because some people have trouble understanding dialects is literally taking away a foundational piece of one's humanity.

It's also a slippery slope: what's there to stop companies that do this from going straight to making everyone sound like a collection of voice profiles? Such a move would only make it easier to justify gutting customer service departments entirely.

[^0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

[Cthulhu_]

For India, English is an official (government) language; it may not be their first but they're really good at it. But, heavily accented, not unlike other English native speakers, and the less exposure one has to the accent the harder it is to understand. (Americans will have trouble with British accents that aren't london too)

[adriand]

I went to Newfoundland and I went to a bar one night and met a guy from a small town along the coast and I literally couldn’t understand a single thing he said. He was apparently speaking English but it may have been Ancient Greek for all I was able to make out. The only way we could communicate was via the bartender, who would interpret what he said and tell me. He had no trouble understanding me. It kinda blew my mind.

[LoganDark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc

[ChoGGi]

Newfoundland

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u9eTOIGZkOI

[cassianoleal]

> heavily accented, not unlike other English native speakers

One could just as well argue the opposite position.

[torginus]

Dunno, a ton of UK born and raised people have accents so thick that I struggle to make out what they're saying.

[SkyeCA]

I am from a Canadian maritime province. I have had Americans (particularly from the south) who at least claimed they couldn't easily understand me, despite me understanding them just fine.

[bonesss]

I had a Newfie friend from a Newfie family growing up, all good no problem.

The Newfie barber they introduced me to I had to smile and nod because I couldn’t understand a word he said. And neither could they.

There are accents and then there’s accints.

[Bombthecat]

Agree!

I play destiny in a clan, most of them are from UK. I don't understand a single word from some of them...

[alberto467]

And i honestly don't think they would get hired for a call center job.

[triceratops]

> For India, English is an official (government) language; it may not be their first but they're really good at it. But, heavily accented, not unlike other English native speakers,

Not just accented. India has regional English accents. Some of my Indian colleagues have very different accents from others.

[Sophira]

On the one hand, I agree with you, and your reasoning is self-evident IMO.

On the other, too many customers are complete racist dicks to people who they perceive as not "belonging to their country". I... don't think this is the solution to that problem (people will just start applying their racist views elsewhere), but it could be argued by some that it might help.

I'm still against this, don't get me wrong - we absolutely should not be doing this to anybody. I can understand the appeal, though.

[crote]

Or perhaps you treat the customer support workers as humans instead of worker drones and give them the agency to terminate the call when they are getting abused, with the contracts of repeat offenders getting terminated?

[ffsm8]

> On the other, too many customers are complete racist dicks to people who they perceive as not "belonging to their country"

nunez alluded to the reason why people will do that. And no, it's not racist in the way you're trying to frame it.

The callers are angry that they're being forced to talk with people which don't even speak their language well enough for it to be a non-issue. Despite being paying customers.

Because the company had a genius MBA which wanted a bigger bonus, so they outsourced/offshored it.

These workers may not deserve this treatment, but it's completely understandable - and the foreign workers ARE the representative of the company doing this shit. And thus... Framing this behavior as racism will not help your message whatsoever.

[thedevilslawyer]

Would the cuwotmers also be willing to pay 2x the price for the product or service? These decisions do not happen in a vacuum.

[ffsm8]

What a strawman

1. The price would not be double. It'd be at most a marginal change. No company I've ever seen has more the a single digit percentage of their revenue in customer service

2. The customer was never given the decision wherever theyd be willing to pay ~1-5% more for better service, hence entirely useless to discuss

3. How the hell do you think that makes the people calling customer service racist? Or was my comment too challenging for you to read and comprehend?

[throw0101c]

> Would the cuwotmers also be willing to pay 2x the price for the product or service?

Would the executives, especially the C-suite, be willing to make $8M instead of only $10M in salary and bonuses?

[aceofspades19]

You're making the assumption people with accents are necessarily foreign-based workers. You can be a US or Canadian citizen and have an accent. I worked in a call center in Canada servicing Americans, I was born in Canada and lived here my entire life and I can assure you I definitely sound canadian but customer still accused me of being located in India, a place I have never even visited. So I don't think customer opinions on the matter are 100% justified and fair.

[ffsm8]

> So I don't think customer opinions on the matter are 100% justified and fair.

Neither do I though? I said it's understandable. Abusing people - even just verbally - is pretty much never justifiable.

But that still doesn't make the people doing so racist.

They're just angry (justifiable) and venting it at the representative of the company they're angry about (less so). Framing this issue as racist will just alienate all discourse, that was my point.

[ryandrake]

It's unlikely to be racism, since the customer likely has no idea what the representative's race / skin color is. OP's point was (I believe) that the customers he's talking about would not behave that way if the representative sounded sufficiently native to the customer's own nationality. "Xenophobic" might fit better.

[bearcobra]

I worked in call centres for Telus and Shaw. I’m a white guy from southern Ontario. I’ve had at least 100+ calls where a customer went on a racist tirade directed at me. I think you’re underestimating how much of a role racism plays

[frays]

Not sure why you're being downvoted but this is the truth if you live in a western country (probably other countries too but I have never lived outside of a non-Western country).

[mekoka]

I'm unclear as to where your outrage is directed. Is it that they give jobs offshore? Or rather that those who get them are now victim of their original accent not being heard by Canadians?

[fennecbutt]

But is it only dehumanising in the context of the western world and generally high migration numbers in that direction vs. the opposite direction?

Are you going to also fight the good fight for Chinese and Japanese depictions of and reactions to black people, for example? Because those caricatures are certainly worse.

But I think so long as people are given the choice it's not dehumanising at all. Just like how I choose to speak a little slower if speaking to someone who doesn't speak English very well when it becomes clear they're struggling to follow what I'm saying.

So in a way it's actually more human than completely ignoring the reality of a situation like that. Same as that first human binding the leg of another.

[furyofantares]

I think there can be a nuanced take here.

If I have a hard time with accents and someone has a thick accent, the technology is not too different from the sci-fi babblefish concept, automatic translation for the recipient. It is always presented as an enabling technology.

I have no expectation that sci-fi analysis of a potential technology is correct or complete. But I do think we can think about why this feels so different.

In this case I think neither recipient nor speaker has opted in, and I think deceptively at that. It would feel different if the recipient is turning on an assistive technology because they are having a hard time understanding, or if the speaker is turning on an assistive technology because they are having a hard time doing their job.

[rexpop]

Literally the thesis of Sorry to Bother You (2018).

[hdndjsbbs]

Boots Riley is one of the most underrated American artists of our time. "I'm a Virgo" is also great if you haven't seen it.

[high_na_euv]

So, better if they have no jobs because of things that arent under their control?

Technology is supposed to make life easier and better