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System Recognizes Emotions In People's Voices

Posted by samzenpus on from the what's-wrong-dave? dept.

cylonlover writes "Automated telephone services may get slightly less annoying thanks to research being carried out at Spain's Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Universidad de Granada. A team of scientists from those institutions has created a computer system that is able to recognize the emotional state of a person speaking to it, so that it can alter its behavior to make things less stressful."

3 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Old news by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is this one of those "On this day in history..." stories? Because analyzing caller voice patterns for stress has been SOP for the big boys for years. A pretty common way to get out of the voice prompts and to a person who will likely be competent enough to help you is to swear profusely at the voice recognition system. You'll then often be passed to a senior CSR who can get shit done. The catch is that they're authorized to hang up on you more quickly than a regular rep if you continue to swear once they're on the line.

    I guess the news here is that the existing technology is being used to present automated scripts tailored to the individual caller.

    1. Re:Old news by anglico · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree, the first time I used Fed Ex's menu for a sample return I got frustrated and 'growled' in frustration and it automatically connected me to someone who could understand why I didn't have an account number and what I needed. Of course the next few times I called I waited (just in case they added that option) and when I didn't get that option, I did the same thing, and luckily it worked.

  2. Re:even easier by dissy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    just have the system scan for curse words. easier than detecting emotion, and probably more accurate to determine when people are hating the IVR.

    You would be shocked at the number of IVR systems that currently do this.
    "Fuck" is the new "mash zero"

    At least the ones I am forced to use on a regular basis most seem to support swear words as valid options. Or at least "fuck" and "shit", haven't tried any others.
    On the non-regular calls I only try this trick when my intent is to trigger "Press zero to speak with a representative", seems to be roughly 50% success rate in my semi-limited experiences.

    The only system I can think of that did not support it was my last bank. However their system couldn't be interrupted with menu presses, so you had to wait until it was finished speaking or it would ignore touch tones. Also hitting zero did not take you to a human, but back to the main menu to start over.
    I'm pretty sure they purposely designed it to make you scream "fuck!" a lot and that was listed in the design requirements specified by the customer :P

    In closing, hey Huntington if you're listening, you suck balls.
    For everyone else, give it a try next you need to press zero anyway. If nothing else, it's pretty amusing.