AI is making Philippine call center work more efficient, for better and worse – Rest of World

Bajala says each of his calls at Concentrix is monitored by an artificial intelligence (AI) program that checks his performance. He says his volume of calls has increased under the AI’s watch. At his previous call center job, without an AI program, he answered at most 30 calls per eight-hour shift. Now, he gets through that many before lunchtime. He gets help from an AI “co-pilot,” an assistant that pulls up caller information and makes suggestions in real time. “The co-pilot is helpful,” he says. “But I have to please the AI. The average handling time for each call is 5 to 7 minutes. I can’t go beyond that.” “It’s like we’ve become the robots,” he said. […]

It works like this, the workers said: a sentiment analysis program could be deployed in real time to detect the mood of a conversation. It could also work retroactively, as part of an advanced speech analysis program that transcribes the conversation and judges the emotional state of the agent and caller. Bajala said the program scores him on his tone, his pitch, the mood of the call, his use of positive language, if he avoided interrupting or speaking over a caller, how long he put the caller on hold, and how quickly he resolved the issue. Bajala said he nudges customers toward high-scoring responses: “yes,” “perfect,” “great.” Every stutter, pause, mispronounced word, or deviation from a script earns him a demerit. The program grades Bajala, and, though his base pay remains fixed, continually underperforming could mean probation, no incentives, or even termination, he said. “AI is supposed to make our lives easier, but I just see it as my boss,” he said.