How Contact Centers Improve Security with Voice Biometrics

The modern contact centers are bidding goodbye to the frustrating, costly, and insecure authentication methods with the effectiveness that voice biometrics provides.

FREMONT, CA: Customers today are increasingly expecting a frictionless interaction on the occasions they need to speak with their service providers. Waiting in queues and answering irrelevant questions does not fit modern customer communication. With this, contact centers are facing the ever-growing challenge, paired with the skyrocketing rate of contact center fraud. As contact centers are prime targets of fraudsters, the outdated and vulnerable knowledge-based authentication seem insignificant. Today, contact centers are trying to significantly increase security by utilizing voice biometric technology. This change is expected to have a dramatic impact in terms of reduction in call times, call abandonment, and an overall improvement in customer experience.

As enterprises tighten their security infrastructure in the wake of increased risks and regulatory demands, fraudsters are turning their attention to contact centers. Surveys found that social engineering is the most used way used to render attacks on contact centers. These attacks are incredibly effective as they target not only systems but manipulate human nature. This is one of the major weaknesses of knowledge-based authentication. These attacks put more and more personal information in the hands of fraudsters.  As these attacks continue to become frequent, contact centers need to implement methods to defend themselves.

Security breaches not only cost contact canters money through hefty fines, but also costs them their reputation and customer trust. Implementing voice biometrics offers a focus on security, especially secure authentication. A customer’s information can be easy to find, and their voice, however, cannot. It identifies only that the caller who is in possession of certain information.  When a customer makes a call, the voice biometric technology will easily and rapidly verify the individual, by comparing their voice to the stored samples.

One of the major problems facing modern contact centers is the time it takes to authenticate a caller. Knowledge-based authentication can take nearly one minute to authenticate the caller, but voice biometrics will authenticate a caller in between 2 and 6 seconds without the need for passwords or PINs. This dramatically reduces contact-center metrics and reduces abandonment due to callers’ inability to answer questions and results in positive user experience.

In summary, voice biometrics offers a promising future for contact centers.

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