The extensive amount of digital transformation happening in recent years has affected many aspects of customer behavior. More than ever, customers seek the simplicity of a fast-paced digital world, where every answer is only a few clicks away, and they expect the same level of convenience across all other interaction channels as well.
Intuitiveness Is King
Long gone are the times when customers were willing to interact with ordinary Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems in call centers. The sharp rise of virtual assistants has resulted in legacy IVRs being viewed as a tiresome experience that is better avoided. Today’s world is all about voice commands and conversational AI and not about tedious IVRs with cumbersome hierarchical menus.
Therefore, to meet the elevated expectations of a modern customer reaching out to a call center, businesses are turning their focus to conversational IVRs that offer an outstanding customer experience based on these three essential elements:
- Speed
- Ease of use
- Seamlessness
There is nothing more intuitive than having a natural conversation with a voicebot over the phone. Customers don’t have to think about a list of options to choose from – instead, they can simply say what they are after, and the voicebot responds to them instantly. And if it is something that the voicebot is not able to resolve on its own, the customer can be automatically redirected to a relevant call center agent to take care of them.
Conversational IVRs are excellent in offering fast and effortless ways for customers to resolve routine issues over the phone while saving the energy and time of contact center agents for more complex queries.
Seamlessness Through Voice Biometrics
Nevertheless, the real potential of conversational IVRs is unleashed with the help of voice biometrics. When passive (free speech) voice biometric authentication is built into a conversational IVR, customers can enjoy a truly seamless customer experience – they get authenticated automatically during a call based on the uniqueness of their voice.
This passive voice biometric authentication capability enables such IVRs to verify a customer’s voice within a few seconds as they speak to a voicebot about their request, without the need for a specific passphrase to be said first.
This massively improves the customer experience as customers reaching out to a call center don’t have to spend time on lengthy knowledge-based authentication and can get straight to the point. It also makes customers more willing to use conversational IVRs for self-service due to effortless authentication and the conversational nature of such IVR solutions.
AudioCodes Partners with Phonexia
Therefore, to simplify the process of building seamless IVRs, AudioCodes is partnering with Phonexia to include Passive Voice Biometric Authentication in AudioCodes VoiceAI Connect. This latest addition to AudioCodes VoiceAI Connect allows solution providers to create innovative IVRs using their favorite bot framework and utilize Phonexia’s passive voice biometrics to verify a customer’s voice in just a few seconds, regardless of the language, dialect, and words spoken.
As cybercrime never sleeps and voice phishing is becoming an increasingly popular type of scam, it is extremely important to not only ensure a seamless, intuitive, and fast customer experience over the phone but also to keep access to a customer’s data as secure as possible.
Passive voice biometrics solves all these requirements with elegance, becoming a necessary element of every secure and personalized interaction over the phone with conversational IVRs and contact centers.
Want to integrate voice biometrics and conversational IVRs?
Do it with AudioCodes VoiceAI Connect!
About the Author
Guest post by Miroslav Jirku, VP of Marketing at Phonexia.
Miroslav Jirku is VP of Marketing at Phonexia, one of the world’s leading companies in voice biometrics and speech recognition solutions used in more than 60 countries worldwide.
You can reach him through Email.
