Your voice is as unique as your fingerprint.
As such, it is an ideal characteristic to use for controlling access to services. Your voice is always with you, and you don’t need to remember a new password, security PIN or the answer that you gave to a strange question two years ago.
But how unique is your voice? There may be as many as 100 characteristics that define how your voice sounds by the time it reaches our ears.
This includes a mixture of biological, cultural and personal qualities, including:
- Pronunciation
- Accent
- Speed of speech
- Emphasis
- Mouth
- Vocal tract
- Nasal passages
As you can see, the blending of these different components gives you a unique voice – and a unique identifier.
Advantages of using voice biometrics
Unforgettable. You can forget your password, your seven-digit phone code and your mother-in-law’s first pet, but you can’t forget your voice. Okay, so you can catch laryngitis, but this condition is relatively rare and typically lasts less than 2 weeks. It’s easy enough to provide back-up authentication methods for anyone who has lost their voice, or for customers who cannot speak, or simply do not want to.
Quick ID&V. Authenticating customers by voice is far quicker than the usual process of asking security questions. Rather than wasting agents’ time on identification and verification processes, you can let them focus on helping customers.
Better customer experience. If customers spend less time getting the help they need, they will feel more positive about your organisation. Accelerate the support process and avoid the frustration that can come from cumbersome ID&V processes.
More secure. If you routinely ask customers to speak their security information, you are getting them into the habit of giving away sensitive information – a habit that fraudsters often exploit with phishing schemes. Knowledge questions are also far easier to guess or access through research.
Cost effective. If your ID&V process takes 23-40 seconds, then you’re losing a great deal of agent time every month. Using voice biometrics can help you service more customers with the same time.
Voice biometrics for ID&V
Deploying a voice biometric system is surprisingly simple. And one of the benefits of the system is that customers can quickly enrol in the system, and this onboarding process is completely integrated. There is no additional process for rolling-out voice ID&V, it is simply presented as an option when customers make contact.
Our voice biometric solution is language-agnostic. It doesn’t matter if customers are non-native English speakers, or have strong accents. The software takes the customer’s voice as it is – whoever they are. Customers can speak any phrase, or you can set a different random phrase each time – something that can further reduce opportunities for spoofing.
Would your contact centre benefit from voice ID&V? Our consultants can help you deploy a solution that works for your agents and delights your customers. Contact us today to find out more.
Stephen is IPI’s CX (Customer Experience) Solutions Director, with responsibility across product, commercial and development functions. A CX expert and technologist with over 20 years’ experience, Stephen has worked both partner and vendor side at some of Europe’s biggest contact centre integrators and at the world’s largest workforce optimisation and analytics vendor. His focus has been on pioneering the development of AI, self-service and compliance technologies for the contact centre space and he was recently awarded a patent for the co-invention of a revolutionary fraud prevention tool for contact centres. Passionate about helping organisations realise the promise that technology makes, he is a regular contributor and speaker at CX and contact centre events around the world.
