Emanuel pupils were lucky to attend an OEA lecture given by Simon Dillsworth (OE1988-95); the topic was the use of AI in the service industry.
Simon is Senior Vice President at TTEC covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He began by explaining his career path and giving advice on the various careers in the service economy. He also shared tips on how pupils could develop their skills to improve their CVs when applying for technology sector jobs.
Simon shared that one of the biggest complaints with customer service is telephone operators’ accents being hard to understand; in particular when calling from call centres with lots of background noise. He demonstrated how his company had implemented AI accent nullification to make the operators’ accents easier to understand, as well as background noise cancellation to streamline the whole customer service experience.
Simon shared a demonstration of real time translation over ‘phone calls using AI which translated both the telephone operator’s native language into the caller’s native language and vice versa. He explained how this could create job opportunities for many more people as it removed the requirement to speak English as a prerequisite of call centre employment.
Simon also acknowledged the current issues with AI; one being generative AI’s racial bias, a huge issue which is being addressed. Simon ended the talk by answering questions from the audience. We would like to thank Simon hugely for taking the time to come and talk to us.
– Aidan, L6
