Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

2 | Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

Voice biometrics uses a combination of different elements in a speaker’s voice to verify his/her identity. This solution is used by contact centers to authenticate callers and verify their claimed identity in real-time which eliminates the need for interrogation by contact center agents, saves time, and improves customer experience. In addition, voice biometrics is more secure than traditional authentication methods such as asking about customer mother’s maiden name, thus ensuring higher level of security at the contact center while providing a great solution for fraud prevention.

Sounds good, but how much will it really save my contact center?

To calculate the actual savings, one should take into account three main categories:

• Reduction in contact center authentication times - Average Handle Time reduction

• Increased self-service containment

• Fraud prevention

*Another important category significantly influenced by voice biometrics is customer experience and satisfaction. Since this is a less tangible category, we have excluded it from this paper and focused on the basic calculation of operational cost reduction and fraud prevention.

Looking into each of these categories, this paper will provide you with the tools necessary to make the right assumptions and calculations to quantify savings to be made using voice biometrics.

What Is Voice Biometrics?

3 | Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

Contact Center Average Handle Time Reduction

There is no doubt that voice biometrics authentication reduces the Average Handle Time (AHT), especially when performed in the background of the conversation that takes place between an end-customer and an agent. It eliminates the need for authentication questions asked by the agent and dismisses the customer’s need to look for the answers. But how much time/money is really saved? There are several parameters that need to be considered when calculating this:

1. The number of calls that require authentication daily/annually

2. The portion of callers expected to use voice biometrics within a timeframe (i.e. already enrolled to the system when they call)

3. The expected reduction in AHT with voice biometrics

4. The successful authentication rate

5. The cost per 1 min of call time

* To make this calculation, you can use NICE Real-Time Authentication online calculator:http://nice-files.com/files/RTA_Calculator/update/

Savings equal:

The number of calls that require authentication daily/annually

The portion of callers expected

to use voice biometrics (%)

Expected AHT reduction (min)

Authentication rate (%)

Cost per min of call ($)

4 | Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

1. The number of calls that require authentication daily/annuallyBased on each specific enterprise policy, a portion of the calls that reach the contact center require strict authentication, while other may require a lower level of authentication or none. This depends on the industry (i.e. a bank may require more often authentication than a telco), call type, risk level, and the balance between security, customer experience and operational efficiency that the organization chooses to apply.

2. The portion of callers expected to use voice biometrics within a timeframeIn order to use voice biometrics for authentication, acustomer needs to:

A. Be enrolled in the service, or in other words – have a voiceprint.Focusing on passive enrollment - see insert, callerscan be enrolled on their first call to the contact center– provided the deployment of voice authentication. Orbetter, callers can be enrolled even before their firstcall, if the organization holds a conversation recordedin the past. NICE’s experience shows that 80% ofcustomers offered voice-biometrics will acceptand be passively enrolled.

B. Call the contact center for a reason that requires authentication.The next question in order to calculate the ROI wouldbe: “Amongst the customers who have a voiceprint,how many will call the contact center within ayear?” Only the ones that will call would use voiceauthentication.The assumption that customers call back is notnecessarily valid. Indeed, the computations of callbacks can be confusing in the contact center, as itcan refer to customer call rate and repeat call rate,while we should really refer to the Propensity To Call(PTC). To understand the PTC, one should look fortwo parameters:

1. What is the propensity of a NEW caller to call thecontact center within a year.

2. What is the propensity of a caller that alreadycalled the contact center to call again within a yearThe 80/20 rule works well here. If you look at yourentire customer base you probably have manycustomers that never call. That said, the reality isthat a smaller subset does in fact call, and frequently. This subset of customers is expected to use their voiceprints even more than once a year. NICE’s experience shows that about 45% to 59% of daily callers will be enrolled by the end of the first year of implementing voice biometrics, and that 85% to 90% would enroll after three years.

3. The expected reduction in AHT with voice biometrics

The entire authentication time can be deduced from the Average Handle Time (AHT) with voice biometrics; as voice authentication takes place in the first few seconds of the call, on the background of a natural conversation and does not extend the call in any way. But exactly how much time are we spending authenticating customers?

Not surprisingly, this varies between industries and organizations. Play-acting the typical Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) gives authentication times of 7 to 15 seconds. However, in reality, time and motion studies show significantly longer authentication times of 35 to 90 seconds. Customers either have to look for answers (which takes time) or might not know it at all, making the authentication process even lengthier.

In general, calls are split into three types:

1. No authentication

2. Low risk with little authentication (35 to 45 seconds)

3. High risk with lengthy authentication (45 to 90 seconds)

To calculate the AHT reduction for your contact center, you should do volume estimations for each type and multiply by the authentication times. You will be surprised about the potential!

4. The successful authentication rateThe next step is to calculate the rate of successful authentication. Just like any authentication method, voice biometrics cannot ensure 100% accuracy and will err on the side of caution and fail a number of callers. NICE Real-Time Authentication’s authentication rate is approximately 96% (assuming a False Accept Rate of 1%).

5. The cost per 1 min of call Last but not least, each contact center has its own cost per minute of call which typically includes telecom costs, fully-loaded agent costs (including two levels of management), plus desktop technology and infrastructure costs. Apply this number to calculate the expected savings in dollars.

A voiceprint can be created in two ways:

• Active enrollment: where the customer is requested to say a certain phrase (typically to the IVR) and repeat it several times. This voiceprint can then be used only with the same sentence (text dependent technology).

• Passive enrollment: where a voiceprint is created based on a natural conversation between the end-customer and an agent. This can be done in real-time during a call or based on a call previously recorded.

5 | Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

Increased Self-Service Containment

When customers call the contact center, they typically start their ‘journey’ navigating the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and transferred to an agent if needed. A call with an agent is 7 times more costly than a call with the IVR1 and therefore organizations prefer to contain as many calls as possible in the IVR.

However, studies show that in most contact centers only 20% to 40% of calls are contained in self-service, all the rest reach an agent2. A key reason for that is that traditionally, IVR is considered a less secure channel than a call with an agent, as identity verification tools for IVR are quite limited. Being the most secure authentication method, voice biometrics in the IVR provides high confidence level, which allows completing more actions securely, and containing them in the IVR.

Another reason for not containing calls in the IVR is that end-customers are typically required to enter a pin number. Most customers don’t remember their pins, and therefore are opted out to speak to an agent. Eliminating the need for pins, voice biometrics in the IVR dramatically increases end-customers’ chances to complete activities without reaching an agent.

Back to our calculation – by containing a call in the IVR, almost the entire cost of that call is being saved, approximately 6/7. When calculating how many calls will be contained in the IVR rather than reaching an agent, one should ask two main questions:

1. What is the additional portion of the calls that I would contain in the IVR, if the IVR was more secure using voice biometrics?

2. What is currently the authentication failure rate in the IVR - normally due to forgotten pin?

1 http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/bpa/articles/376364-survey-reveals-ivr-7-times-cheaper-than-talking.htm2 https://www.metricnet.com/call-center-benchmarking-solutions/, http://www.icmi.com/files/ICMI/members/ccmr/ccmr2007/ccmr04/2007%20Call%20Center%20KPI%20

Performance%20Metrics%20Survey%20Report.pdf, https://www.interactions.com/news-items/ivr-continues-spark-interest-utilities/

6 | Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

The calculation should be done as follows:

Additional portion of calls to contain in

IVR (%)

Total number of calls

Current authentication failure rate (%)

Total number of calls

Average cost/call with

agent ($)

Average cost/call in IVR ($)

Authentication rate (%)

The portion of callers

expected to use voice

biometrics (%)

While the successful authentication rate with Real-Time Authentication used via IVR is around 90%, a key figure in this equation is the portion of callers expected to use voice biometrics. When applied in the IVR, most voice biometrics solutions require active authentication, meaning that the end-customer needs to repeat a certain phrase 3 to 5 times to enroll. This is a cumbersome process and many people quit before completing the enrollment. Experience shows that this requirement leads to low enrollment rates of about 15-30% within the first year of implementation. This is a key barrier to reaching a full Return on Investment (ROI) from voice biometrics, as only a small portion of the end-customers actually use it.

Passive enrollment, on the other hand, shows daily caller enrollment rates of about 45 to 59% within one year, and 85 to 90% within three years. Using customer phone calls with live agents for enrollment across channels allows NICE Real-Time Authentication to reach high enrollment rates in a short time, and use these voiceprints (that are created passively) both at the contact center and the IVR.

7 | Voice biometrics at the contact center – how much money will this actually save me?

Fraud Prevention

Global fraud losses continue to increase and it is becoming clearer that the contact center is organizations’ weakest link when it comes to fraudulent attacks. 2016 was a record-setting year for data breaches, according to3 and it shows no sign of slowing down, with fraud losses expected to increase by 21% over the course of 20174.

It is clear that contact centers are becoming more exposed to fraud, but to what extent does voice biometrics prevent it? And how can one put a dollar figure on that?

Fraud can be caught by voice biometrics authentication failures, and these very same failures enrich the voiceprint watch list maintained by the organization. How exactly? When fraudsters call the contact center they fail the authentication and following an analysis, their voiceprints are added to a list of suspected fraudsters. The more end-customers enrolled, the more voice biometrics is in use, and the more fraudsters can be caught. So the enrollment rate directly affects fraud loss prevention. In other words, assuming you got an enrollment rate of 59% within a year, your fraud losses will be reduced by approximately 59% as well.

3 Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) - http://www.idtheftcenter.org/2016databreaches.html4 Infiniti Research - https://www.scmagazineuk.com/nuance-says-that-biometrics-have-reached-their-coming-of-age/article/668717/

Summary

In addition to its intangible impact on customer experience and satisfaction, voice biometrics has the power to dramatically reduce organizations’ operational costs and fraud losses, while enhancing security. With the right setup, planning and implementation, voice biometrics can save many millions of dollars annually. Working with NICE, and levering its vast contact center knowhow and expertise, organizations accelerate their savings when deploying NICE Real-Time Authentication and can see an ROI within 6 to 9 months.

About NICE

NICE (Nasdaq:NICE) is the worldwide leading provider of both cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions that empower organizations to make smarter decisions based on advanced analytics of structured and unstructured data. NICE helps organizations of all sizes deliver better customer service, ensure compliance, combat fraud and safeguard citizens. Over 22,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies, are using NICE solutions. www.nice.com.