Voice biometrics is the process of identification based on an individual’s voice. The process is known as biometric because a person’s voiceprint is similar to a fingerprint or other unique characteristics that are difficult to replicate by another individual. The sound wave of a voice, or the pattern created by a person speaking, can be studied to identify thousands of different data points and characteristics.
Voice verification solutions can use as many as 500 unique voice features, such as intonation, cadence, and variations, to accurately pinpoint a person’s identity using a voiceprint and simultaneously detect fraudsters through impersonation in real time.
Voice: An Effective Method for Securing Caller Identity
One of the most pervasive challenges contact centers and customer-facing organizations face is that caller authentication using traditional verification systems isn’t enough to prevent fraud. Fraudsters are finding ways to use social engineering or social media to obtain people’s personal information and use it to impersonate them during phone conversations.
Voice biometrics technology verifies the identity of the caller passively in the background of a conversation. As soon as a customer initiates a conversation, the voiceprint of the speaker is compared to the call records already on file and is authenticated within a few seconds.
Reducing Fraud with Behavioral Voice Biometrics
The other important role for voice verification and biometrics is that it is a highly effective solution to combat fraud. Fraudsters may know a lot of personal information and have even crafted scripts to provide a similar answer to prompts as the intended customer would, but their voiceprints won’t match the behavioral and physiological characteristics of the other individual. Intelligent contact center platforms are getting smarter at detecting irregularities in speech and other indicators that something is amiss.
Behavioral Voice Biometrics Improves Customer Experience
Customer expectations of digital interactions are at an all-time high, and buyers are demanding to be safe from risk while communicating frictionlessly and without interruption. Behavioral voice biometrics is ideal for this because the systems authenticate and verify identity without making the customer take any additional steps or feel encumbered by other processes. For the enterprise, biometric voice authentication tools also streamline contact center operations, minimize call duration, and reduce resolution time.
Applications Across Industries
Behavioral voice biometrics is used by several different industries for fraud prevention and stopping cybercriminals. Banks use voiceprints to guard against account takeover fraud and online fraud. Healthcare providers are able to secure access to patient records while meeting privacy regulations with voice biometrics.
Government agencies use voice biometrics to safeguard citizen identity verification in voice communication, and enterprises can use voiceprints and verification to protect employees from impersonation attacks and fraud.
Voice-Based Security: The Future is Calling
Voice biometrics authentication and security tools are an expected staple of future-facing contact centers that have incorporated digital-first communications with cloud telephony and solutions. As AI is applied to this type of security system, machine learning can be used to adapt and learn about a user’s voice to allow the natural changes to occur due to aging, health, or even environmental noise, and continue to function with high precision.
These platforms can also apply predictive analytics and real-time analysis to identify fraud and apply behavioral voice biometrics as another layer of security to verify identities.
Conclusion
Behavioral voice biometrics is a secure way to verify identities and analyze voices to confirm a person is who they claim to be. The next generation of voice solutions is going beyond simply taking a look at the acoustic voice signature and applying AI and machine learning to understand the behavioral components that make voiceprints so secure and difficult for fraudsters to break.
Voice verification is one of the most user-friendly and seamless means of authenticating identities, which makes it an ideal solution for customer authentication that keeps everyone safe. Get ahead of phone fraud and secure customer communications with behavioral voice biometrics now. Call us today!
