Automated Speaker Verification (Voice Biometrics) - What's Everyone Waiting For?

Automated speaker verification uses voice biometrics to verify a caller’s identity by his or her spoken voice. Voice biometrics measures the person’s vocal tract characteristics (to produce a digitized voiceprint), and is unique to each individual. Voice biometrics is highly accurate, non-invasive and ideal for identity verification over the phone.

Automated speaker verification consists of two processes -- enrollment and verification.

Enrollment:
• Person enrolls (after their identity is verified) by repeating a pass phrase three times (text-dependent approach)

Verification:
• In subsequent calls, enrolled person is prompted by IVR to repeat their pass phrase
• Successful verification allows person to proceed in IVR or transfer to an agent (who is alerted to person’s verification status)

There are four compelling reasons why automated speaker verification should be deployed at call centers:

• Reduces costs
• Increases security
• Enhances customer experience
• Facilitates regulatory compliance

Reduces Costs

In today’s environment, most call centers ask callers a series of challenge questions (e.g., “mother’s maiden name”) to verify their identity. This process typically takes anywhere from 30-60 seconds. Automated speaker verification can do it in less than 5 seconds. Multiply the savings by 100s/1,000s of callers and the productivity gains start to add up. Of course, automating the identity verification process also allows agents to spend more valuable time actually servicing callers.

Increases Security

Identity fraud continues to be a growing problem for consumers and businesses in the United States. Through the use of social engineering techniques such as “pre-texting” or “phishing,” fraudsters can obtain personal information that allows them to assume the identity of another person. This is of particular concern to call centers, as a caller may know the answers to the challenge questions but in fact be an imposter. Automated speaker verification can significantly reduce this threat by ensuring that the caller is actually who they say they are.

Enhances Customer Experience

“Please verify your address.” “What was the name of your first dog?” “Who did you date in fifth grade?”

Automated speaker verification provides a quicker and more user-friendly process for verifying a caller’s identity. For starters, there is no need for the caller to remember or disclose personal information in response to all those annoying challenge questions. Callers get to the service or information they need quicker and spend less time on the call – and that’s a good thing!

Facilitates Regulatory Compliance

Regulations such as FFIEC and HIPAA mandate higher levels of identity verification, known as multi-factor authentication. The three primary factor categories are “something the caller knows” (e.g., account number), “something the caller has” (e.g., hardware token) and “something the caller is” (e.g., person’s voice characteristics). Call centers can use automated speaker verification, combined with another factor (such as account number), to ensure compliance with the multi-factor requirement.

Conclusion

Automated speaker verification is a proven technology which can reduce costs, increase security, enhance the customer experience and facilitate regulatory compliance.

What's everyone waiting for?