In a project intended to help veterans with PTSD, the Department of Defense paid for medical staff to interview patients with psychological problems and annotate audio files of the data to mark changes in emotional state. That provided the perfect feedstock for machine-learning software now used in industries including healthcare and financial services, says Feast. Cogito applied deep-learning algorithms like those behind the improved speech recognition in assistants like Alexa to the Pentagon’s data, and audio from call centers and other sources.

In addition to nudging call agents to pep up their tone, or respond to distress in a caller’s voice, Cogito’s software listens to the pace and pattern of calls. Agents see a notification if they start speaking more quickly, a caller is silent for a long time, or the caller and agent talk over each other. Humans can notice all those things, but struggle to do so consistently, says Feast. “We’re trying to help someone doing 60 calls a day, and who may be tired,” he says.

Eavesdropping by corporate, emotionally aware software, may bother some consumers, even those used to being watched by cameras and online tracking. Analyzing a customer’s voice doesn’t require additional disclosure beyond the familiar line advising that calls may be monitored. “I’m habituated to that warning but this feels different,” says Elaine Sedenberg, a graduate researcher and co-director of the Center for Technology, Society & Policy at the University of California Berkeley. “I’m not expecting that extra layer of analysis.”

Sedenberg also questions whether technology like Cogito’s works equally well across different groups of people, which could lead to disparities in service between different social or ethnic groups. The company says it has tested the software on a range of demographics, and that non-verbal cues are more reliable across languages than analyzing the words people say. As well as US customers like MetLife and Humana, Cogito is used by Zurich Financial, where the primary language is German. Cogito does not provide guidance to customers on what it would consider inappropriate uses of the product, but says it is designed to only deliver insights that improve customer relations.

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MetLife says it’s already seeing Cogito’s insights paying off. The company has deployed the technology in three customer-call teams in different parts of the business, and is planning a wider rollout. Kristine Poznanski, executive vice president of customer solutions, says that the initial deployments have driven customer satisfaction up, and the average duration of calls down.

State Collection Service, which handles collections for many healthcare companies from three call centers in Wisconsin, reports similar gains from deploying a competing product. The company has customized a real-time call monitoring tool from CallMiner, based in Waltham, Massachusetts. It is based on speech analysis technology from Nuance, which for a time powered the speech recognition capabilities of Apple's Siri.

Employees at State Collection see messages of congratulation and cute animal photos when software suggests a customer is satisfied, for example. When tone and language suggest a caller is getting worked up, employees see a suggestion to “Calm down” and a list of soothing talking points. If a worker omits legally required disclaimers, the system sends a reminder.

Chief operating officer Tracy Dudek estimates that a worker might see three to five notifications a minute during a typical call. That might sound like a lot, but she says call agents like it because it helps them in their job, boosting their chances of a performance-related bonus. The system has helped bring about a significant jump in the number of cases resolved in a single call, and increased revenue per call agent, Dudek says.

As you might expect, making some workers more productive can mean there’s less work for others to do. A few years ago, State Collection introduced a system that uses speech recognition to retrospectively transcribe every call. Since then, Dudek says the company has reduced the number of people and amount of time dedicated to reviewing calls for quality assurance. The newer, real-time voice analysis has helped the company increase the number of call agents overseen by a single supervisor, she says.