The more sophisticated online and mobile experiences become, the more difficult is for people to prove their true identity — especially when it matters.
It’s a problem for both banks and their customers. Not only does it put a dent in the customer experience, it presents fraud and privacy risks for both parties. That’s why TD Bank is implementing voice recognition technology at its customer call center.
“One of the largest irritants our customers had was with authentication and having to answer all those questions we had to ask them in order to verify they were who they said they were,” said Robert Ghazal, TD’s head of U.S. contact centers.
The technology, branded as TD VoicePrint, reads about 150 different characteristics of a customer’s speaking patterns to create a “vocal fingerprint,” without recording the voice itself or storing any kind of voice biometric that can be stolen. After capturing the voice print, customers can phone in and TD will verify their identities by their voice prints instead of by answering security questions, and the customer service representative will prompt them to speak more if it doesn’t recognize them. The bank worked with agency TBWA/Chiat/Day to create an experiment to test the technology.
