Voice biometrics technology uses a person’s voice to authenticate their identity. Thanks to sophisticated artificial intelligence, advanced voice biometrics is one of the most popular authentication methods among customers.
Indeed, a Unisys study shows that voice recognition ranks as the most preferred method for authentication (32 percent), followed by fingerprint scan (27 percent), facial scan (20 percent), and hand geometry (12 percent).
Such statistics perhaps illustrate people’s preference for convenience and familiarity when they need to prove their identity. Like their face or fingerprint, a person’s voice is a unique passkey that is always with them and something they don’t need to write down or memorize.
Building on this, let’s look at how contact centers can harness voice biometrics to reduce the risk of fraud and provide seamless, more convenient experiences.
The Superior Passkey: Voice
When considering authentication and accessing personal accounts or profiles, passwords and PINs immediately spring to mind.
Yet, as widespread as they are, passwords and PINs are one of the most vulnerable forms of user authentication. They often contain a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols that are reused across multiple accounts and infrequently changed.
For these reasons, passwords and PINs are highly prone to data breaches and cyberattacks, eroding consumer trust and creating reluctance when they are the only options available to secure an account.
On the other hand, voice biometrics circumvents these pitfalls of passwords and PINs. Think of it as a “passkey,” superior to a traditional “password.”
Emphasizing the importance of this distinction, Jennifer Bonacci, Product Marketer for Security and Compliance at Talkdesk, says: "It's not a recording of what a person is saying, but rather a snapshot of the variables that make up the way they speak: their voiceprint.”
"Similar to a fingerprint, a voiceprint is unique to each person and is near-impossible for someone else to mimic."
Because many of the underlying characteristics that make up a person’s voice remain the same, voice biometrics can even work when someone has a cold that is affecting the sound of their voice.
In the unlikely event that a person’s voice has changed so much that it’s unrecognizable, a ‘worst-case’ scenario would be the voice biometrics technology flagging the attempt as unsafe and asking for additional authentication steps to ensure account security.
How Voice Biometrics Thwarts Fraud
Voice biometrics can thwart an attempt by a malicious actor to access personal data using either the recording of a voice or deepfake technology. It does this by using AI and machine learning (ML) to pick up on data points inaudible to the human ear.
Not only does it tease out the variations in tone and tiny nuances that make up the whole of a person’s voice, it can also ‘hear’ the additional white noise that accompanies a recording, for example.
All of these factors work together to provide frictionless, safe, and reliable authentication.
"No one system is infallible," says Bonacci, "But voice biometrics is one of the safest authentication methods out there.”