2024 Speech Industry Award Winner: Sanas Brings Clarity to Contact Center Interactions

Regardless of where they’re based, accents can create problems for call center agents, subjecting them to verbal abuse from angry customer and discrimination in hiring and retention. As a result, agents with heavy accents often feel pressure to go through intense and often costly training to permanently change how they speak.

But now, thanks to Sanas, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of real-time speech understanding technology, agents have a choice in how they’re heard and can proudly hold on to their unique voice characteristics.

The company, which was founded in 2020, earlier this year received a U.S. patent for its Real-Time Accent Conversion AI Technology. With it, agents speak naturally while the technology adapts their accents to one the customer can better understand. The platform supports more than 400 languages and dialects.

“Being granted this patent is very exciting news for our company as we work to pioneer a movement toward a more inclusive and understanding global community. We are on a mission to cut down on communication barriers around the world, making accent-related bias a thing of the past. Sanas empowers agents to be more confident and be better understood, resulting in happier agents,” said Maxim Serebryakov, cofounder and CEO of Sanas, in a statement.

And that goal is playing out in real-life situations. Contact centers that have used the technology have seen an average 22 percent customer satisfaction score boost and an 18 percent reduction in average handle time. And by removing accents from the hiring criteria, Sanas opens opportunities for individuals located in more rural areas and reduces recruitment costs, onboarding costs, and agent churn.

The accent mitigation technology is just one part of Sanas’ larger mission to bring clarity to contact center interactions. In June, it launched Sanas Noise Cancellation, which uses patent-pending artificial intelligence technology to create noise-free communications environments for contact centers worldwide. The technology is being made available for free to all contact centers around the world.

“Noise cancellation technology has been gate-kept for many years. We wanted to break those barriers down and make this technology truly accessible for every contact center in the world. That’s why our team of AI scientists and innovators created Sanas Noise Cancellation, a patent-pending solution that’s free forever to everyone, to elevate contact center operations and improve the end-user experience,” said Sharath Keshava Narayana, cofounder and chief operating officer of Sanas, in a statement.

Both Sanas’ noise cancellation and accent mitigation technologies are already being incorporated into a few contact centers. Today, more than 30,000 agents worldwide leverage Sanas’ technology to improve their day-to-day customer interactions. Additionally, 100,000 agents are already using Noise Cancellation.

In July, for example, Everise, a customer service provider for global healthcare companies, began a partnership with Sanas to integrate its AI-powered real-time speech understanding technology into Everise’s customer experience solutions.

“Integrating Sanas’ technology into our solutions will enable us to achieve greater customer satisfaction, connecting people better and delivering a truly global and inclusive customer experience no matter where the customer or client is located,” said Sudhir Agarwal, founder and CEO of Everise, in a statement.

A similar deal with Five9 makes Sanas’ Real-Time Accent Translation available on the Five9 Marketplace.

Contact center outsourcing services provider Continuum Global Solutions is also using Sanas’ accent and background noise-cancellation technology. “With this technology, our agents can be ready for any conversation with several accents available at the touch of a button,” says Michael Flodin, Continuum’s CEO. “It maintains the dignity of their native language while matching a customers’ preferences to enhance the entire experience. We are committed to protecting the diverse voice identities of the world and their cultures.”

And Joe DeLuca, director of voice and contact center systems at Wyndham Worldwide, said, “At Wyndham Hotels & Resorts...Sanas’ pioneering technology aligns perfectly with our mission to be genuinely customer-centric, breaking down communication barriers and ensuring that every interaction feels personal, effortless, and engaging.”