Voice Biometrics for IVRs and Virtual Agents

You can use voice biometrics to authenticate contacts The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. on voice channels A way for contacts to interact with agents or bots. A channel can be voice, email, chat, social media, and so on.. This method uses voiceprints to authenticate contacts over the phone. Every person has a unique voiceprint, just as they have unique fingerprints. It only takes 0.5 to 3 seconds of normal, conversational speech for a voice biometric service to determine if the caller is who they claim to be.

You can use voice biometric authentication in interactions with: 

• Virtual Agents: The authentication takes place while the contact is interacting with the virtual agent A software application that handles customer interactions in place of a live human agent. .

• IVRs: The authentication takes place while the contact is interacting with the IVR Automated phone menu that allows callers to interact through voice commands, key inputs, or both, to obtain information, route an inbound voice call, or both. menu and before they're connected to a live or virtual agent.

You must have a supported voice biometric provider to use this option. You can also set up voice biometric authentication for live agents.

Conversation Design

Using an IVR or virtual agent for voice biometric authentication requires additional conversation design work.

To have an IVR Automated phone menu that allows callers to interact through voice commands, key inputs, or both, to obtain information, route an inbound voice call, or both. handle the authentication, you must design the conversation in the script. You can use prerecorded audio prompts or a text-to-speech service to present the required information and prompts to the contact.

Using a virtual agent to handle the authentication requires intents The meaning or purpose behind what a contact says/types; what the contact wants to communicate or accomplish for the process. Your virtual agent must be taught how to handle this kind of interaction. You are responsible for training your virtual agent. It's important to coordinate with the Studio scripter in your organization. Ensure that the variables used in the virtual agent's configuration and the voice biometric system are included in the script and vice versa. This allows the script and the virtual agent to pass data back and forth.

Both virtual agents and IVRs must be set up to follow the contact enrollment and authentication processes. This includes: 

• Obtaining permission to record their voice and send it to the voice biometric provider.
• Asking questions to verify the identity of the contact before creating the baseline voiceprint.
• Handling contacts who fail identity verification.
• Verifying the identity of contacts who previously opted out of voice biometric authentication.
• Handling potentially fraudulent contacts or voices. The voice biometric provider maintains a block list that it checks each contact's voice against.

You can see the example script on the help page for the supported voice biometric provider. The example script for voice biometrics shows a basic flow for an IVR. You can follow this example to build your own customized process.

Contact Enrollment

Before the voice biometric provider can verify the identity of contacts, each contact must enroll. Prior to enrolling the contact, your organization must get permission from the contact to capture their audio and enroll them in voice biometric authentication. During the enrollment process, a baseline voiceprint is created. The voice biometric provider compares the baseline print to the voiceprints of future callers claiming to be the contact.

The voice biometric provider creates a profile for the contact. The profile includes the baseline voiceprint and a a user ID (customer ID). The customer ID must be unique for each contact, such as an account number or email address. Your organization can choose what the identifier will be.

In future interactions, the customer ID is used during the authentication process. The contact's voiceprint must match the baseline print associated with their customer ID.

The flow of enrollment is: 

1. At the start of a call, the virtual agent or IVR captures the contact's customer ID sends it to the voice biometric provider. The provider checks for the contact's customer ID in the system. If the customer ID is in the system the script proceeds with the authentication branch.
2. If the customer ID is not in the voice biometrics provider's system, script takes the enroll-or-opt-out branch.
3. The virtual agent or IVR must verify the contact's identity by asking your organization's standard manual authentication questions. If the contact passes the identity verification, the script continues with the enroll-or-opt-out branch. If the contact does not pass the identity verification, the script takes the branch for failed identity verification.

4. The virtual agent or IVR presents information about voice biometric authentication to the contact. If the contact wants to enroll, the script takes the enrollment branch. If the contact does not want to enroll, the script takes the opt out branch.

   If the contact opts out, the voice biometric provider creates a profile for the user to show they opted out. In the future when an opted-out contact calls, the provider will return the opted out status when it checks the contact's customer ID at the start of an interaction and the script will need to manually authenticate the contact. Contacts who have previously opted out can opt in during future calls.

5. Enrollment requires 20-40 seconds of natural, conversational speech. The amount of time depends on the settings in the provider's console. It's related to how secure your organization needs this process to be. The contact doesn't need to say specific words for the recording. However, the virtual agent or IVR must engage with the contact to keep them talking. For example, the virtual agent or IVR might ask the contact why they're calling.

   During enrollment, the contact's audio is recorded and sent to the voice biometric provider. Because of this, you may not want the IVR or virtual agent to ask the contact questions that would reveal sensitive information, such as personally identifiable information (PII). Your organization should determine what kinds of questions to ask during the enrollment process to avoid capturing sensitive information during the process.
   

6. As the contact speaks, the audio is sent in real time to the voice biometric provider. When the provider has enough audio to create the baseline voiceprint, it sends a notification to the script. The script stops the recording and proceeds with the interaction.
7. The voice biometric provider creates the contact's profile with the associated voiceprint.

You can view all enrolled contacts in the voice biometric provider's management console. You can also see a list of contacts who have opted out of voice authentication. To learn more about how to view this information, refer to the documentation for your voice biometric provider.

Block Lists

Voice biometric providers maintain block lists of proven fraudulent voices. If a contact's voice is on the provider's block list, the provider returns a result indicating fraud. After a certain number of times that a blocklisted voice calls on a specific customer ID, the corresponding voice biometric profile is locked. The number of times a blocklisted voice can call before the profile is locked can vary depending on the voice biometric provider.

CXone Mpower does not handle locked voice biometric profiles. Your organization must determine how to handle potentially fraudulent contacts. To unlock a profile, you must work with your voice biometric provider account representative. You can also log in to the voice biometric provider's console to unlock it.

Integration Process

The setup of voice biometric authentication for IVRs Automated phone menu that allows callers to interact through voice commands, key inputs, or both, to obtain information, route an inbound voice call, or both. or virtual agents A software application that handles customer interactions in place of a live human agent. requires that you create a voice biometric profile in Voice Biometrics Hub. This is where you configure the connection between your voice biometric provider and CXone Mpower.

You must also create your custom script. This allows you to set up the link between the voice biometric provider and CXone Mpower. If you're using an IVR, this is also how you build the conversation between the IVR and the contact.

Currently, the only supported provider is Nuance.