In this post I will focus on the enriched customer experience voice biometrics provides for telephone and internet banking.

Voice Biometrics: Illustration of Customer Benefits

Source: Agnitio

Enhanced Security: An individual’s voice is unique so it will be less vulnerable to fraudulent activity and identity theft unlike passwords and PINs that can be easily hacked into or PIN pads and tokens that can be easily lost or stolen. The enhanced security that voice biometrics provides will give customers ‘peace of mind.’

Increased Convenience: For banking customers not only will their bank accounts be more secure but they will be able to experience a more convenient and quicker verification process in order to gain access to information on their account or conduct any transactional activity. This is because a customer being authenticated using voice biometrics means that all they need is their ‘voice’ to be verified. They no longer have to remember PINs, passwords, answers to a series of memorable questions or carry PIN pads or tokens with them.

Build Trust and Confidence: Banking customers need to sustain the trust and confidence that their bank is providing them with a robust telephone banking service that will protect their bank accounts in the light of increased fraudulent activity and identity theft such as phishing and pharming attacks. Voice biometrics is a more secure mechanism than alternative security mechanisms such passwords and PINs available today. This will raise the customer’s trust and confidence level in their bank.

Ease of use: Two main factors will provide for a more simplified user authentication process. Firstly the robustness of voice biometrics technology will mean that there will be fewer processes to complete to authenticate an individual. Secondly, the ease with which voice biometrics can be used (e.g. repeating random digit prompts) will also contribute to providing a more user-friendly authentication process.

Increased Time Efficiencies: Finally, for the process of authentication will be quicker with voice biometrics as less information is required during the verification process thus offering a more satisfying experience. However, cynics on the use of voice biometrics for internet banking argue that an extra layer of security means it is inconvenient and time consuming. This could be a misconception as the process of voice verification on the internet can prove to be just as quick as having to type in a set of random generated numbers from a token or digits from a PIN pad. And even if this were the case customers would be willing to go undertake a more comprehensive authentication process if it means their internet bank accounts are better protected.

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This post will look at the critical success factors that solution providers need to think through when deploying a voice biometrics based application in the corporate environment. It would be great to hear about your experiences in this area

Choosing the right technology that supports the voice application: You need to look at what speech recognition, text to speech, IVR and other supporting technologies you will select to support your voice application

Voice Biometrics approach adopted:  How will users enroll and verify? Will you use a text dependent or text independent technology to do so?

Security and privacy policies: Focus on this should be from the organisation and service offering perspectives, including legal implications for the specific country you are addressing with your capability

The voice user interface that will be used:  A good user interface is key for web, client server and voice applications. In the voice biometrics marketplace we have noticed that the voice user interfaces have been largely designed by voice biometrics specialists, where we feel there is great room for improvement. Bringing in the cognitive specialists that understand the psychology behind a user interface therefore can be a crucial success factor in the adoption of your voice biometrics application.

Design and development of voice biometrics solution - ‘One size does not fit all’: Different solutions need to designed and developed dependent on whether the end-user is a super user and needs short-cut options (e.g. shorter and seamless voice biometric verification approach) versus novice users (e.g. extra help required)

Training of call centre agents: How will call centre agents be trained? What script will you give your call center agents for the dialogue, and how will you train them? How long or short will the dialogue be, if you use an IVR scripted interface?

There are a multitude of factors to take into consideration when deploying a voice biometrics based solution. Highlighted above are key success factors to enhance the end-user experience hence contributing significantly to higher adoption rates   

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The adoption of voice biometrics as was discussed at the Voice Biometrics conference in New York is in its first growth phase. Currently in the corporate environment voice biometrics has been adopted for employee centric automated password re-set use in the banking sector, customer based account access in the telecoms industry and employee based time and attendance use in the healthcare industry.

This post will look at the real value in the use of voice biometrics for remote banking customer services via the telephone or internet. This is the largest potential area of current deployment by banks to reduce the rise of fraudulent activity and provide customers with a more enriched experience.

This second phase of adoption of voice biometrics is already underway in the financial sector as was indicated by leading financial institutions present at the Voice Biometrics conference in New York in mid-May. There are more pilots being rolled out with mid to large scale deployments expected by the end of 2008/Q1 2009. This will be a significant milestone in the banking community as a whole to reduce fraudulent activity and identity theft. It will be very beneficial for remote banking customers who will not only have peace of mind with an enhanced layer of security protecting their identity and bank accounts but will also need to remember less memorable questions when trying to access their bank accounts making for a more convenient process. The benefits of both a more secure and convenient solution will raise the profile of the real value and benefits of voice biometrics setting the scene for voice biometrics to become more mainstream.

I would be very interested in learning about your viewpoints on the use of voice biometrics in the financial sector and other industries in the corporate environment

My next post will focus on the critical success factors to think through when deploying a voice biometrics solution in the corporate environment.

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In the first of a series of posts over the next couple of weeks, I will look at the main themes and topics that were raised at a very insightful voice biometrics conference held in New York on 14-15 May 2008. http://voicebiocon.com/vbc%2Dnyc/agenda.asp  The voice biometrics conference is currently held bi-annually (in North America and Europe) by Opus Research. It is the only conference dedicated to this space. It has proven to be very successful addressing both vendor and end-user perspectives

This post will look at the expanding deployment of voice biometrics in the corporate environment and the viewpoint expressed by the corporate community, especially financial institutions.

One returning theme of this year’s VoiceBiocon conference was that voice biometrics as a technology is ready for major corporations to deploy in their voice applications. It is robust enough, has the accuracy levels clients are looking for and is scalable. This was confirmed by many vendors and more importantly by some major financial and telecom institutions that talked about their first implementations. These implementations have seen varying degrees of success, but every single one of the customers that presented will continue with voice biometrics and deploy it in other parts of the business. One respected bank even went as far as saying that “voice biometrics is cool!”

In my next post I will touch upon the types of initial applications that voice biometrics is being used for in the corporate environment with a focus on the real value of voice biometrics in the financial sector.

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Although, historically the use of biometrics for forensic applications have been associated with fingerprint biometrics - AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems)  voice biometrics is increasingly being used as a complementary biometric technology for identifying suspects, criminals and fraudsters remotely via telephony channels.

This post provides an insight into the rising significant trend of the use of voice biometrics for forensic applications. It would be great to hear your viewpoint on this subject matter. In my next blog I will be looking at more details at trends in the corporate sector.

As more and more criminal activity is conducted remotely — either via a landline or mobile phone the need to have more sophisticated forensic tools has arisen. Voice biometrics is viewed as the most advanced and suitable technology to combat this type of criminal activity. For example, individuals involved in drug trafficking deals, bomb threats, kidnapping threats and fraudulent activity over either a landline or mobile/cell phone. Voice biometrics has a competitive advantage over other biometric technologies for remotely identifying individuals for non-co-operative criminal investigations. This tool is also becoming increasingly important to identity criminals such as terrorists who are out to purport criminal activities

Key forensic applications that voice biometrics is used for are:

Forensic evidence in the court of law: In the last two years voice biometrics has been used as key forensic evidence to identify international criminal gangs and fraudsters. In countries such as Germany and Spain in Europe and as far afield as Malaysia in Asia, legislation has been passed to allow voice biometrics to be used as supporting evidence in court. This is with other classical techniques (phonetic and semiautomatic approaches). The way it works is that experts can provide a quantified number to support the strength of the evidence, when specific intercepted telephone conversations can be compared with the defendant’s voice.

Compilation of a voice database:  In certain countries worldwide police forces and law enforcement agencies are already designing, developing and populating voice databases, similar to fingerprint databases, of criminals involved in illegal activities. It is proving to be extremely useful in identifying criminals involved in current crimes. It is also an important method of capturing data on suspects and criminals who can be identified if they were to commit other crimes.

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Talk about voice biometrics and many people immediately begin to imagine a futuristic technology from a James Bond movie, rather than something they might encounter on a phone call to their high street bank. Actually, voice biometrics has been gaining significant traction globally. A wide range of organisations including governments, law enforcement agencies and increasingly corporate organisations such as financial organisations are deploying the technology, to provide a more accurate way to identify and authenticate people based on their unique, personal characteristics.

In this first post I’d like to explain voice biometrics and address some of the common misconceptions associated with it. If you have a different perspective on the technology or thoughts you’d like to have, then I would welcome hearing about them.

How does voice biometrics technology work?

Voice biometric technology works by taking various measurements of an individual’s voice signal (or sound wave) which are related to their vocal tract. These parameters are stored as the individual’s voice model or voiceprint.

How does voice biometrics differ from speech recognition?

Voice biometrics often gets confused with speech recognition. There is a distinct difference between speech recognition and voice biometrics. Speech recognition systems typically understand words an individual is saying whereas voice biometrics uses a more advanced method to capture an individual’s voice model which is then used to verify or identify the individual.

Voice Biometrics – A unique, convenient, enhanced security solution here today…

Although voice biometrics is perceived as an enhanced security technology of the future it is here today and here to stay. Voice biometrics has distinct advantages compared to other biometric and non-biometrics technologies such as passwords, secret questions, PINS and security ID tokens

So, what are the competitive advantages of voice biometrics?

1. Unique for enhanced security for remote access authentication: Voice biometrics is uniquely positioned owing to its remote authentication capabilities. It does not require the individual’s physical presence during the enrolment, verification or identification process. This makes it ideal for telephony or web-based applications where remote authentication is required.

2. Convenient: End-users no longer need to memorise passwords or answers to secret questions or even carry a security ID token for that matter. An individual’s ‘voice’ authenticates the person thus making it convenient and enriching the end-user experience.

3. Intuitive and natural technology: As voice biometrics uses only spoken words it is significantly less intrusive than systems that rely on scanners or similar devices. It is intuitive and generally very easy to use. Typical voice biometric applications require no end-user training. As it is such a natural process it is widely accepted by end users. Voice biometrics has tremendous potential to be applied in all kinds of government and commercial scenarios. I hope to explore these in more depth in future posts.

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