Major financial institution deploys passive voice authentication in the IVR
Extending their Nuance voice biometrics solution into the IVR, the company is able to seamlessly authenticate 79% of customers before they reach an agent.
Extending authentication to the IVR
After delivering a smoother live agent experience using Nuance voice biometrics, this financial institution wanted to bolster its competitive edge by authenticating callers in their interactive voice response (IVR) system, even before they reach an agent.
Challenge
Authenticate customers before they reach an agent and eliminate the need for passwords or security questions to improve experiences and reduce costs.
Solution
Passive voice authentication from Nuance identifies customers during their voice‑controlled navigation of an interactive voice response system (IVR).
Results
Passive voice authentication in the IVR makes customers feel recognized and welcomed by agents while reducing average handle time on customer calls.
Background
This financial institution is one of the largest asset managers in the world, and one of the earliest adopters of voice biometrics technology. Since deploying Nuance’s voice biometrics for customer authentication across its contact centers in 2017, the company has enrolled more than 6.5 million customers and is achieving a 99% authentication success rate on live agent calls—streamlining and protecting customer calls while reducing average handle time and other operational costs.
After delivering a smoother experience, increased personalization, and faster resolution on live agent calls, the asset management firm wanted to innovate even further and bolster its competitive edge by authenticating callers in their interactive voice response system (IVR), even before they reach an agent. But, the problem was that callers only provide an average of one second of audio during an IVR interaction, making biometric authentication a challenge.
One step ahead of the market
Working closely with Nuance’s experts, the company extended their Nuance voice biometrics solution into its IVR and tuned the system to authenticate callers from minimal voice utterances. Using out‑of‑the‑box performance of the Nuance voice biometrics engine, the financial institution is able to seamlessly authenticate 79% of customers contacting the care center before they reach an agent, eliminating the need for lengthy, frustrating knowledge‑based authentication. Agents already know both who the customer is and what they’re calling about, making customers feel recognized and welcomed. Furthermore, voice authentication is 80% or more faster than their previous password‑based method, reducing average handle time by 82 seconds on customer calls.
The company is continuing to improve the verification success rate even further, with the aim to authenticate every customer before they reach an agent. And to make its services even more user‑friendly, the team is also extending voice biometrics to mobile channels to streamline and protect every customer interaction wherever and however they engage.
Unmatched outcomes
79%
authentication success rate in the IVR
80%
faster customer authentication
82s
average handle time reduction