Deutsche Telekom on fraud prevention and customer experience with biometrics

Once the inevitable bugs have been worked out of the system, customers will be able to speak their requests naturally instead of navigating a complex phone menu, while the sound of their voice can also be used to confirm their identity.

The customers who choose to use the technology will simply have to say ‘Bei der Telekom ist meine Stimme mein Passwort’ (which means ‘At Telekom my voice is my password’ in English) to identify themselves.

Voice biometrics work by digitizing a profile of a person’s speech to produce a stored model voice print. Each spoken work is reduces to segments composed of several dominant frequencies called formants, with each segment subsequently having several tones that can be captured in a digital format. The tones collectively identify the speaker’s unique voice print, which the Nuance technology will allocate to a specific customer.

The technology can also help prevent fraud. The voice print itself is similar to a finger print in that they are unique to individuals. While no system is ever going to be 100% fool proof, the voice print does sound more secure than security questions, the answers to which can be worked out by effectively profiling a potential victim.

Voice biometrics have been used by numerous organizations, with Royal Bank of Canada, Santander, TalkTalk, and Vodafone Turkey among those who have each enrolled more than 1 million customer voiceprints after implementation.