Your Call Center Is Protected with Voice Biometrics. What’s Next?

Voice biometrics is most commonly deployed for inbound call center use cases at financial institutions. It’s the first line of defense to address the most immediate and critical threat of fraud. However, it’s not the only place voice authentication can (or should) be used within a banking environment to improve security and user experience.

We sat down with Amy Travers, VP of Sales at Illuma, to explore four additional use cases to extend an existing voice verification solution to other areas.

#1 IVR / IVA (Intelligent Virtual Assistant)

As more financial institutions shift to a “digital first” model, streamlining operational efficiency while upleveling user experience is top of mind. Fraud prevention that leverages voice authentication can deflect more calls away from the live agent channel, reducing the burden of high call volume. According to Travers, “Traditionally, IVRs and IVAs are set up to only allow low-risk interactions such as checking a balance, answering FAQs, or making payments. But if you need to send a wire, for example, that type of transaction requires human interaction. By adding voice verification into the self-service channels, it elevates security and allows callers to do more via self-service.”

In addition to reducing calls from the highest cost channel, there is an added benefit of creating consistency across channels. Voice biometrics is well-received by consumers, and there is no reason to restrict this preferred authentication method to just the human agent handled voice channel.

There is also a strong security use case for deploying voice biometrics in the IVR/IVA. “Synthetic attacks are more probable in self-service. Voice biometrics is not just for authenticating and allowing callers to do more, it also identifies high risk and synthetic calls in that channel. Bots programmatically try, at scale, to break into accounts via the IVR. It’s an area where there is an opportunity to really improve fraud prevention.”

#2 Outbound Calls for Collections or Marketing

In a perfect world, outbound calls and inbound calls should both verify account holder identity using the same methods or tools. In fact, this is simple to do by deploying existing voice verification software like Illuma Shield™ to cover outbound calls as well. Consumers have been trained to expect that a real bank or credit union will never call them asking for sensitive information. However, verifying identity on an outbound call using traditional security Q&A entails doing exactly that. This can create confusion for consumers who are trying to avoid giving personal information to fraudsters. Using voice authentication eliminates this issue.

Amy pointed out an additional benefit of using a highly credible method like voice biometrics, “Collections has a legal requirement to establish they are talking to the right party. Using biometrics is a reliable way to validate that they are speaking to the correct person.”

For marketing purposes, an agent may be making outbound calls to offer an existing customer or member a new financial service. Voice authentication makes it seamless to move from the offer to finalizing setup of the new financial product under the user’s account.

#3 Digital Banking Support and Consultations

In modern cloud-based multi-channel call center platforms, there is an opportunity to erase the disconnect between telephony and chat or other channels. Amy pointed out one use case that is already possible with some platforms, “A user is able to engage in chat, and then shift seamlessly to contacting a live agent on the phone from the chat session if the virtual agent is unable to help them. They can simply say ‘call’ and do that from the chat session to switch to a call or video.”

Financial consultations and other video transactions can also be improved by the consistency and reliability of voice authentication. Currently, a high-risk transaction for significant dollar amounts might trigger the requirement for a scheduled video call where the account holder is asked to show their ID to complete the transaction. Obviously, an ID can be easily faked, especially with advance notice. Voice biometrics provides much stronger defense against fakes and fraud.

#4 Internal Help Desk Use Cases for Employee Identity Verification

A fraudster breaking into a single individual’s account is a big problem. If they break into the entire server system of an institution, this is a disaster. The notorious MGM voice phishing debacle is perhaps the best known recent example. As Travers pointed out, “In that scenario, a fraudster called the helpdesk, got them to reset a password by texting a code to a phone # and resulted in $8M in losses.”

While such an attack can happen at any time, banks or credit unions in merger or acquisition mode are targeted at a high rate. Typically, IT helpdesks are overwhelmed and there are many unfamiliar users in the system. Voice biometrics is an obvious solution for help desk use cases where employee identity needs to be verified. Having it in place as a standard for all work from home employees also makes sense.

These use cases highlight the fact that voice biometrics can be used in any channel with a voice interface, including self-service channels. Leveraging voice verification across additional channels ensures consistency and accelerates ROI for financial institutions.

Want to explore the use cases that make sense for your organization? Contact our team today.