Dealing with irate customers can be extremely stressful for call center workers but SoftBank thinks it has a solution: artificial intelligence-enabled software that softens the tone of customers' voices. The country's third-largest telecoms provider aims to begin testing the technology internally and externally over the next year and commercialize it by the end of March 2026. "We are working on the development of a solution that can convert the customer's voice into a calm conversational tone and deliver it to our workers using AI-enabled emotion recognition and voice processing technology," SoftBank said in a news release on Wednesday. "With this solution, we aim to maintain good relationships with customers through sound communication while ensuring the psychological welfare of our workers." Japan prides itself on its high standard of customer service but the issue of harassment of staff working in the service industry has gained more awareness in recent years.