Accent Softening Sounds Off

Accent Softening changes the accent heard by the lister on a call. The goal is to improve intelligibility and trust on calls with accented individuals.

Type of Voice Quality Issues

• Robotic voice: If a person hearing the solution complains about the voice sounding robotic, first, this will sometimes happen, as some individuals are more sensitive to such things. If this comes up, the agent could be trained to say:
  
  “I have a thick accent, and so I’m using a voice filter to help our conversation. Is that okay?”
  
  If the issue happens too often, use the instructions below to test other voice options.
• Intelligibility Issues: If the person hearing the voice has issues understanding some words, this is expected. Not all words are understood in human communications, especially with an accented individual. The hope is that the solution improves intelligibility compared to not having it on.
  
  If this continues to be an issue, use the Mic Check to practice a typical script and see if there are words you can pronounce differently or maybe swap out for similar words to improve intelligibility.
  
• Words Dropped: If some words are not coming through, then it might be due to a slow internet connection. Read how to troubleshoot a similar issue, Experiencing High Latency, to see if that fixes the issue.

Additional Troubleshooting

If the Accent Softening voice still does not sound right, follow these steps:

1. Make sure to use a headset. For best results use a recommended headset
2. Use the Mic Check in the PC App to see how you sound with different versions of the accent softening. Use a typical script you might use with customers for at least a minute. Review each result and pick the voice that sounds best.

Share Log File and Sample

After troubleshooting, if the accent softening still sounds off, please email us the log file and explain the problem in detail. If possible, also email a sample recording highlighting the problem.