Shorter calls – it’s every call center manager’s dream as the cost per call goes down and the number of calls the agent is able to handle goes up. In many a call center, the tools put in place to accomplish this included the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and other self-service opportunities. To truly drive the shorter call in the omni-channel customer engagement environment, however, the demand is pointing to voice biometrics.
A blog post by omni-channel customer engagement solutions provider, Aspect (News - Alert) explores the potential of voice biometrics and what it means for today’s call center. We’ve all seen the Sci-Fi movies where voice biometrics can command complete system for world domination, this technology of the future can today serve as an extremely secure authentication factor. This is essential within those environments where personal information has to be shared and should only have to be shared one time.
The goal here is to create the ideal omni-channel customer engagement experience that eliminates the need to keep your account number and telephone PIN handy. It also eliminates the abandoned calls because that information is not handy when the call is first made, or the steps taken to simply try and reach the live agent to help find the information. In each of these situations, voice biometrics can help with enhanced security, a shorter authentication process and a reduction in the hassle of remembering multiple passwords in a world that needs nothing more than passwords.
When combined with your IVR, voice biometrics enables faster authentication and an additional layer of security. From Aspect, this comes in the form of the Aspect CXP. To make this solution work in the contact center environment, customers would have to do a one-time voice sample enrollment, which is facilitated with the use of free speech or by asking them to repeat a set of numerical digits after a prompt. Aspect CXP also comes with a unique feature of the Random PIN Authentication to safeguard this process against hacks attempted with recording playbacks.
Once a consumer is enrolled, his or her voice sample is assigned a score each time he or she tries to authenticate. The score is then weighed against a threshold that can determine whether or not the user has passed or failed the authentication step. Personalized thresholds can be determined by voice, networks or applications to provide the streamlined experience customers have come to expect in the omni-channel customer engagement experience.
Edited by Maurice Nagle