The Benefits of Voice Biometrics for Businesses

Since the introduction of clumsy dictation software, speech recognition technology has undoubtedly come a long way. Today, AI-based voice recognition systems can detect emotion and intent. In some cases, it can even predict human responses. The tech may not be perfect, but it's remarkably accurate - to the point that your voice can be used to identify and authenticate you. Incorporating voice biometrics into your business model can yield many benefits, from enhanced security to better customer experiences and more efficient service delivery.

In this post, we'll go over what voice biometrics are, how they work, and what they can do for your business.

Voice Biometrics

Biometrics, in general, refers to the practice of using unique physical traits to establish one's identity and grant access to something. The earliest form of biometric authentication was the use of fingerprints. Today, we can also use facial recognition and voiceprints, among others - i.e., iris scanning.

Voice biometrics refers to systems that can identify someone by analyzing their unique voice traits. Each person's speech has its own unique characteristics in terms of speed, prosody, pronunciation, accent, etc. Voice biometrics systems analyze all this and more and can then certify your identity with a very high degree of probability.

The system works by having the user record a voice sample that will be processed and analyzed by the voice biometrics algorithms. This process produces the user's voiceprint - a digital representation of their voice and its characteristics that will be referred to when the user needs to be identified and authenticated. Access will be granted if the user's current speech matches the voiceprint. If not, it is denied. Some organizations also create multiple voiceprints to reduce the odds of false positives or negatives.

Benefits of Voice Biometrics

Incorporating voice biometrics into your organization can yield some significant benefits. Below is a sampling of some of the top benefits of using voice biometrics for authentication.

Better Security

While some will bring up audio deepfakes to argue against the security of voice biometrics, it's not that simple. First, mimicking or impersonating voiceprints is still a technical challenge today and is not something that your typical user old with a laptop and an internet connection could easily pull off. 

Second, most voice biometrics systems are integrated into multi-factor authentication schemes, in which the user is sent a one-time password (OTP) used alongside voice biometrics as another factor. Hence, the case is simple: a voice biometrics + OTP scheme is much more secure than a password + OTP scheme.

Voice biometrics will also assure you that you're speaking with the proper person and not just one who knows the password (and received the OTP). So enhanced security is definitely a benefit of voice biometrics.

Improved Customer Experience

Having to remember passwords or the answers to security questions can be challenging for some. Also, in a typical customer service call, identifying the customer verbally through challenge-response questions takes quite a bit of time and can be error-prone. Voice biometrics speed up the authentication process and removes the need to remember passwords or answer security questions.

That results in a smoother, more straightforward way to instantly identify customers and provide them with customer service or access to their accounts and services. Everyone wins.

Lower Costs & Higher Productivity

Voice biometrics can lower an organization's costs in a few ways. Because voice biometrics speed up the identification process, your agents will spend less time on the phone doing just that. Shorter calls mean better productivity. Also, with a voice biometrics system setup, organizations can further reduce costs by setting up some self-service features accessed through voice authentication. Finally, this frees up some of your agents so you can assign more critical tasks without raising your organization's headcount.

Authenticate Anywhere

Other biometrics authentication systems, like facial recognition or iris scanning systems, require the user to be physically present and use specific devices to capture the biometrics. In contrast, voice authentication can be done over a regular telephone, enabling authentication from pretty much anywhere.

Interact Over Multiple Channels

Voice biometrics can be integrated into contact centers, online shops, messaging platforms, and mobile applications. Providing a multichannel experience to your customers can create some engaging customer experiences. By effectively connecting multiple networks together, users, for example, can start a conversation on one channel and continue where they left off on another channel. Also, having a multichannel presence provides more opportunities for your customers to engage with your brand - which is very likely to grow your revenue.

Wrap Up

So there you have it. Voice biometrics is a great asset to businesses. It isn't necessarily bulletproof. But nothing ever will be. Substituting passwords for voiceprints is a security enhancement, as long as the stored voiceprints remain secure and aren't shared - that's going to be critical for user trust.

If everything is set up properly, voice biometrics will provide tangible benefits to your organization and customers.

The future is vocal.

About Modev

Modev was founded in 2008 on the simple belief that human connection is vital in the era of digital transformation. Modev believes markets are made. From mobile to voice, Modev has helped develop ecosystems for new waves of technology. Today, Modev produces market-leading events such as VOICE Global, presented by Google Assistant, VOICE Summit the most important voice-tech conference globally, and the Webby award-winning VOICE Talks internet talk show. Modev staff, better known as "Modevators," include community building and transformation experts worldwide. To learn more about Modev, and the breadth of events and ecosystem services offered live, virtually, locally, and nationally - visit modev.com.