December 31, 2006 marks the deadline for compliance to guidelines established by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) for authenticating users of online banking services. While the guidelines focus on Internet-based commerce, banks must offer consistency and ease-of-use across multiple media. Voice biometrics has a major role to play as an authentication factor for multiple touch points.
Featured Research
Voice ASP Best Practices, Edition 2.0
Research findings based on a series of executive interviews coupled with a thorough literature review to identify “best practices†exhibited among providers of hosted or managed automated speech processing. Opus Research identifies what’s working now regarding real-world implementations focusing on the Five ‘Ps’ common to business analysis: Pricing, Promotion, Product, Partnerships and Personnel. In this report, we highlight techniques which correlate both with business success and customer satisfaction.
RSA Adapts Vocent Product Line
RSA Security’s Adaptive Authentication for Phone furthers voice authentication’s foray into high-volume, customer-facing deployments. It makes good on RSA’s promise to incorporate Vocent’s framework (acquired via the PassMark Security acquisition) and Nuance’s biometric engine into its core offerings. Timing is driven, at least in the U.S., by a regulatory mandate for “two-factor” authentication. Demand “pull” is expected to follow.
On the Road to Speech-Enabled Mobile Search (SEMS)
Tellme Networks’ expanded role with Cingular and Call Genie’s partnerships with Verizon, Telus, Rogers and Yellow Pages Group create fertile beds for product definition, technology refinement market conditioning and, most importantly, business plan development. These market leaders show that there are many paths towards building sustainable business models on Speech-Enabled Mobile Search (SEMS).
INFONXX Buys Excell Services and Conduit: Seeking Global Scale for Local, Mobile Search
Wholesale providers of directory assistance services have a major role to play in the emerging local, mobile search marketplace. By acquiring Excell Services and taking formal control of Irish contact center operator Conduit Limited, INFONXX positions itself as a key source of service enhancements for directive advertising and customer care, in addition to enhanced directory assistance.
Voice Biometric Update: New Demand Drives Caller Authentication
Voice biometric technology providers are in position to vie for a share of the market created by the need to provide user authentication for online- and phone-based commerce. Opus Research expects rapid growth for voice-based caller authentication, anticipating large-scale, customer-facing implementations among financial institutions, insurance companies, government agencies and customer care.
SpeechTEK 2006 Retrospective: Rationalizing a New Value Chain
High-profile addresses from Paul English, Microsoft and Nuance at SpeechTek 2006 indicate that the speech-processing community is acutely aware that new economic rules apply. New alliances and hosted service offerings are emerging to lower the cost and complexity of implementing speech-enabled applications. And new “standards†are emerging to ensure that new systems respond to the expressed needs of enterprise customers.
The Friendly Face of Genesys: How Customer Interaction Portal Front-Ends a Unified Platform Strategy
After a successful sneak peek at G-Force, Genesys Telecommunication Laboratories offered Opus Research a deep look into its new offering: the Genesys Customer Interaction Portal. Currently positioned to support network-based self-service applications, the Customer Interaction Portal is poised to become a business user friendly design and management front-end for all of Genesys’ products and platforms. Developing this product with support from a partner firm represents a new attitude for this historically ”in-house-technologies-only” firm. The Customer Interaction Portal, in all senses of the term, has become the shining example of the friendly face of Genesys.
Voice Authentication Baked into Aeroplan’s Customer Care
Aeroplan, the loyalty program administrator that separated itself from AirCanada, has completed ‘Phase 1’ in rolling out a hosted voice self-service (VSS) application that includes conversational authentication of a caller’s identity based on comparison of spoken words with a stored voiceprint. Voiceprints are designed to take the place of personal identification numbers and simplify the log-in process.
VoiceObjects 6: Product Introduction Impact Study
The July 2006 release of VoiceObjects 6, coupled with the company’s re-location to California, marks a significant product and market shift that will influence how enterprises and service providers can implement and manage self-service phone applications –from touch-tone or speech to multimodal voice, video and text-based applications.