Voice Biometrics for Live 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.

Voice biometric authentication for live agents requires a supported voice biometric provider. Additionally, your agents must use a supported agent application.

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 agent enters the contact's customer ID into Customer ID field on the Voice Biometric window in the CXone Mpower Agent application and submits it to the voice biometric provider. The provider checks for the contact's customer ID in the system. If the customer ID exists in the system the voice biometric provider proceeds with authentication.
2. If the customer ID does not exist in the voice biometrics provider's system, the agent assist panel in the agent application displays the Customer is not enrolled message with the Opt Out and Consent and Enroll buttons.
3. The agent must verify the contact's identity by asking your organization's standard manual authentication questions.

4. The agent discusses voice biometric authentication with the contact. If the contact wants to enroll, the agent clicks Enroll and Consent. If the contact does not want to enroll, the agent clicks Opt Out.

   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 user ID at the start of an interaction. The agent 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, but the agent must engage with the contact to keep them talking. For example, the agent 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 your agents to ask the contact questions that would reveal sensitive information, such as personally identifiable information (PII). Your organization should determine what kinds of questions agents should 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 agent application, which stops the recording and displays the Enrolled message to the agent.
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 live agents requires steps in Voice Biometrics Hub and Agent Assist Hub. In Voice Biometrics Hub, you configure the connection between your voice biometric provider and CXone Mpower. In Agent Assist Hub, you configure the connection between CXone Mpower and the agent application. You must also customize any script where you want voice biometric authentication to be used.

The integration steps depend on the provider you use:

• CXone Mpower Autopilot Voice Biometrics
• Nuance Gatekeeper

After setting up voice biometric authentication, you can send your agents the online help for using it in interactions The full conversation with an agent through a channel. For example, an interaction can be a voice call, email, chat, or social media conversation.. Note that there are currently some limitations to using voice biometrics. These limitations will be addressed in future releases before the feature becomes generally available. For a list of the current limitations, contact your Account Representative.