Emotion Recognition Method for Call/Contact Centre Systems

Abstract

Nowadays, one of the important aspects of research on call/contact centre (CC) systems is how to automate their operations. Process automation is influenced by the continuous development in the implementation of virtual assistants. The effectiveness of virtual assistants depends on numerous factors. One of the most important is correctly recognizing the intent of clients conversing with the machine. Recognizing intentions is not an easy process, as often the client’s actual intentions can only be correctly identified after considering the client’s emotional state. When it comes to human–machine communication, the ability of a virtual assistant to recognize the client’s emotional state would greatly improve its effectiveness. This paper proposes a new method for recognizing interlocutors’ emotions dedicated directly to contact centre systems. The developed method provides opportunities to determine emotional states in text and voice channels. It provides opportunities to explore both the client’s and the agent’s emotional states. Information about agents’ emotions can be used to build their behavioural profiles, which is also applicable in contact centres. In addition, the paper explored the possibility of emotion assessment based on automatic transcriptions of recordings, which also positively affected emotion recognition performance in the voice channel. The research used actual conversations that took place during the operation of a large, commercial contact centre. The proposed solution makes it possible to recognize the emotions of customers contacting the hotline and agents handling these calls. Using this information in practical applications can increase the efficiency of agents’ work, efficiency of bots used in CC and increase customer satisfaction.