Consumer sentiment strongly supports voice biometrics for APAC contact centers: NICE survey

BENGALURU: NICE, a US-headquartered company that provides both cloud and on-premises enterprise software solutions, has announced the results of its Asia Pacific Voice Biometrics Consumer Survey.

The survey revealed that consumers are in favor of companies using voice recognition to authenticate their identity when interacting with a contact center.

This, according to the analysis, saves times for both customers and contact center agents and eliminates frustration caused by forgotten passwords or wrong answers to traditional security questions.

NICE’s survey of 900 consumers in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore discovered the following:

• 46 percent of respondents rated their current experience of authenticating themselves when engaging with a contact center as somewhere between neutral and terrible. Just nine per cent said it was ‘great.’
• 55 percent of people said having to answer security questions (which are usually personal) to a stranger via telephone when they’re in a public place is their biggest frustration when trying to authenticate themselves.
• Consumer readiness to accept voice biometrics for contact center authentication is high: 88 percent were open to voice biometrics. Of the people who had never heard of voice biometrics, 81 per cent were open to it once they understood what voice biometrics means.

Commenting on the outcome of the survey, Raghav Sahgal, President of NICE APAC, said, “Once the respondents learned about the benefits of biometrics, their likelihood of performing transactions via the contact center tripled. This demonstrates high levels of readiness and a huge revenue opportunity for businesses that can incorporate voice biometrics into their authentication processes.”

He further said, “Voice biometrics lets enterprises interact with their customers in a friendly and personalized manner by authenticating the customer on the background of a natural conversation, allowing service agents to immediately start helping the customer. This greatly improves customer satisfaction and reduces fraud. Organizations that implement voice biometrics technology can dramatically improve customer service and reduce handle times, leading to increased sales and customer loyalty.”