Voice Biometrics benefits for call centres

Voice Biometrics is a numerical representation of the sound, pattern, and rhythm of an individual’s voice and is as unique to an individual as a palm or fingerprint.

What is Voice Biometrics?

In the same way that every human has a unique fingerprint or retina, voice biometrics technology is used to identify a person through their voice patterns known as a voiceprint.

Biologically speaking, no human being has the same voice, including those of identical twins making.

According to Robert Schwarz from Nuance, a fingerprint identifies about 20 points of reference where Voice Biometrics looks at over 1,000 voices of reference.

So if we are able to accurately identify someone over the phone, it opens up a range of possibilities in how we can improve the customer experience and slash operating costs at the same time.

Benefits of Voice Biometrics in call centres

Voice Biometrics technology is already saving businesses with call centres millions of dollars per year and customers also love it.

In Australia, the Australian Taxation Office has been using Voice Biometrics for years and globally in 2018 over 300 million consumers made more the five billion successful voice transactions using the Nuance biometric technology so it’s fair to say the voice biometrics business is booming.

And for good reason.

How Voice Biometrics benefits customers

Ever rang a call centre and before you can even begin the conversation you need to complete your ID check?

Full name, date of birth, current address, next of kin, mothers maiden name, first car, first pet and so on.

It seems like a never-ending list of questions.

Well with Voice Biometrics that all disappears.

The Voice Recognition identifies the customer through their voice as the conversation is beginning.

Customers love the technology because:

It saves them time
It reduces frustration with having to remember all the ID check answers
Given the reduction in fraud, the savings businesses make can be passed onto the consumer

How Voice Biometrics benefits business

In call centres, time is money.

When one Australian bank introduced voice recognition is saved 45 seconds off every call.

But for the purposes of an easy calculation (let’s keep things simple hey) let’s make a few assumptions:

Your current manual identification process takes 60 seconds
Your average fully loaded cost for one call centre agent is $60 per hour

Just on that simple maths above you can identify you are saving $1 off every single call.

And getting happier customers.

When you are in a call centre with tens of thousands through to millions of calls it’s easy to see the ROI.

And call centre agents love it too.

Imagine having to repeat the same process 100 times a day with a customer?

And then having about 50% of the customers complaining about the process (which eats up more time).

Well, all that goes away so your call centre agents are also happier.

And happier call centre agents are more productive and stay longer.

Risk of using Voice Biometrics

There are some situations where Voice Biometrics don’t work, mainly if the customer is in a noisy situation.

And despite belief, an ageing voice does not impact a voiceprint and neither does a cold.

And even in the worst-case scenario where the Voice Biometrics technology is not able to complete the identity, all is not lost.

You can still complete a manual check just like you were doing previously.

Next steps

With the Tax Office and banks already using it Australia and billions worldwide, a high customer uptake and satisfaction along with a great Return on Investment there is no better time to get voice biometrics technology in your call centre.