NICE Ltd. announced on March 8 the results of its survey revealed the Philippines, India and Indonesia are aware of voice biometrics (VB) “but have never usedit before”.
The survey by Nice (Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering) also revealed consumers in these and other Asia-Pacific markets “are overwhelmingly in favor of companies using voice recognition to authenticate their identity when interacting with a contact center”.
“This saves times for both customers and contact-center agents, and eliminates frustration caused by forgotten passwords or wrong answers to traditional security questions,” the Israel-based company said.
VB is an authentication process that relies on a customer’s voice and is an alternative to personal information numbers (PINs), passwords that use keyboard characters and security questions.
Nice’s Asia Pacific Voice Biometrics Consumer Survey of 900 consumers in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore revealed that 46 percent of respondents rated their current experience of authenticating themselves when engaging with a contact center as somewhere between neutral and terrible. Just 9 percent said it was “great”.
Over a third of respondents in emerging markets (India, Indonesia and the Philippines) have heard of VB, “but have never used it before”.
“These high awareness rates, coupled with overwhelming openness to adopting VB, suggest the great potential for VB implementation in the emerging markets,” Nice said.
Consumer readiness to accept VB for contact-center authentication is high, according to Nice, citing that 88 percent of those polled were open to VB.
“Of the people who had never heard of VB, 81 percent were open to it once they understood what VB means,” Nice said.
“Once the respondents learned about the benefits of biometrics, their likelihood of performing transactions via the contact center increased by 1.5 times,” Nice Asia-Pacific President Raghav Sahgal was quoted in a statement as saying. “This demonstrates high levels of readiness and a huge revenue opportunity for businesses that can incorporate [VB] into their authentication processes.”