by Laura Álvarez | Apr. 2022 | Biometric Identification
Many people wonder what the difference between biometric identification and verification is, so in this article we tell you everything you need to know about the differences and the benefits they bring to companies.
Identity spoofing, the candy for cybercriminals.
Nowadays, we can say that, in general, companies are directing their efforts towards the digitalization of their services, whatever the sector they are in, providing their users with greater autonomy through their platforms and applications where users can manage themselves.
However, despite great benefits such as improved customer experience, time savings, and ease of operations, this trend towards digitization is the perfect scenario for cybercrime, where identity fraud is the most recurrent crime with 58% according to a survey by the AECF (2021).
Given this situation, companies are betting on more sophisticated security systems such as Biometric Identification and Verification technology, which, according to the same survey, is being implemented by 55% of the companies surveyed.
However, doubts may have arisen as to what is biometric identification?, is it the same as verification?, or why is it so interesting?, let us clear up your doubts in this post.
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Are biometric identification and biometric verification the same thing?
No, biometric identification is not the same as verification, since identification consists of determining the identity of a person by capturing the biometric element of our choice, whether it is the fingerprint, the vein pattern, the eye pattern (iris and retina) or even the voice itself. In other words, indicating that an element belongs to a specific person, creating that connection.
On the other hand, biometric authentication, also known as verification, has more to do with a subsequent process in which the data of a person’s characteristics are compared with the biometric element stored in a database, which is associated with that specific person, in order to determine their similarity and corroborate the match between the fingerprint and the person to whom they belong.
Benefits of biometric fingerprinting for customer identification and verification.
Fraud detection
Proving that a person claims to be who they are by verifying real-life intangible traits inherent to the person that cannot be replicated and supplanted by technology, such as voice, iris or fingerprint, offers companies high levels of reliability, allowing agents to react immediately to potential errors or impersonations to prevent potential crime.
Efficient identification processes
This technology optimizes processes and increases the efficiency of agents by reducing waiting times and the minutes they spend on this task. In this way, it is possible to carry out the customer’s request in a faster way, while at the same time reducing the possibility of human error, allowing to improve KPIs such as the Average Handle Time.
In addition, by achieving higher process efficiencies, agents spend less time on the phone, resulting in lower operating costs while avoiding costs associated with fraud and identity theft.
Improved Customer Experience
Customer experience is becoming more and more essential for all companies. Improving customer experience involves several factors, including reducing waiting times, optimizing processes and maximizing safety and quality of service. Therefore, identifying a customer in a matter of seconds through biometric fingerprinting without the need to resort to security questions and without neglecting their security, offers the customer an improved experience by reducing waiting times and optimizing identification and verification processes.
Compliance with international data protection regulations
The regulations do not expressly require biometric identification, however, regulations such as the GDPR state that individuals must voluntarily give specific, informed and unambiguous consent before companies can process their data. Therefore, once an individual is biometrically identified, their identity will be linked to the status of their consent, whatever it may be, enabling corrective actions to ensure compliance.
These benefits explain why more and more companies are turning to biometric identification, particularly companies in highly regulated sectors such as finance or healthcare. It is particularly interesting when this technology is integrated with call recording solutions, offering a comprehensive approach to security and compliance, such as the Recordia solution, which offers the service of biometric voice identification and verification while recording calls.
If you want to know more about our biometrics solution, Recordia Biometric Identification, click here.
by Laura Álvarez | Apr. 2022 | Call Recording
Because the way we create, store and share data changes every day thanks to technological developments, extensive regulations, policies, and standards have been created that companies are obliged to comply with to ensure data privacy protection.
For this reason, while companies have benefited from call recording for reasons such as quality management, improving customer experience, or even employee monitoring, the primary reason why companies have adopted call recording systems has been the need for regulatory compliance.
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But what does recording entail for regulatory compliance and what do we need to consider in order to optimize call recording and avoid incurring fines, security breaches, and inefficiencies?
Call Recording for compliance
Call recording solutions are a powerful tool to ensure company compliance and thus reduce the risk of penalties, reputational dilapidation, or costly lawsuits and fines that have been on the rise in recent years.
Among all the international regulations created to protect personal data and customer privacy, some of the most important ones affecting call recording are GDPR and CCPA for regulating data privacy and PCI DSS, MiFID II, and DODD-FRANK ACT for regulating transparency in the financial sector.
Ensuring full compliance with regulations, ethical behavior, and, in addition, transmitting this transparency to their customers becomes essential for all companies, not because it gives them a competitive advantage, but it is because the absence of these aspects means the disappearance of the company, especially for those in highly regulated sectors such as the financial one, and this is where call recording comes into action.
More advanced solutions, such as Recordia Cloud Call Recording, make it easier and more secure to comply with international regulations while keeping data secure.
Benefits of cloud call recording solutions:
Single platform:
The most complete cloud call recording solutions offer great benefits by presenting themselves as a single platform on which to access all interaction recordings. This provides companies with security, efficiency, and cost reduction because there is no need, to maintain different platforms or change the rules of custody or recording, among other reasons.
Secure and scalable storage:
Traditional call recording solutions have limitations in terms of recording storage. By using the latest cloud solutions, there is greater flexibility to offer features and functionality tailored to the needs of individual companies. Cloud-based call recording solutions allow for secure storage, scalability of the solution, and artificial intelligence-enhanced functionalities.
Regulatory compliance:
It is necessary to have certified call recording solutions and platforms that ensure security and compliance with international data protection regulations.
Checklist to ensure call recording compliance
To ensure that the call recording solution you use meets the compliance needs imposed by international data protection regulations, you should consider the following points, which, if not compliant, the company should consider taking corrective actions:
- Your recordings are stored using highly secure encryption methods.
- Your call recording solution can be scaled according to demand.
- Your recordings remain encrypted.
- 100% of the calls made can be recorded.
- The storage of your recordings is centralized in a unique place.
- You have a retention and deletion policy set in case it is requested by customers or 3rd parties.
- Your recordings are available upon request.
- Access to the recordings is restricted and users who access them are authenticated through secure methods.
- Your recordings can be filtered by date and time in case of an audit.
- Recording can be paused and resumed for PCI DSS compliance in case of sensitive data such as credit card numbers.
- Data can be securely exported for later viewing.
- Your call recording solution alerts in case of risky behavior within your organization to stay ahead of potential problems.
There are solutions, such as Recordia, that allow to fully address the issue of compliance in terms of call recording from a single platform. By complying with the requirements described above, which are common to several international regulations, companies can comply with both national and international regulations without incurring costs or security risks by diversifying call recording platforms.
If you want to learn more about a complete call recording cloud solutions like Recordia that enable and ensure regulatory compliance, click here.
by Laura Álvarez | Apr. 2022 | Speech Analytics
In Contact Centers, quality assurance has always been a critical part of improving agent performance, ensuring compliance, and enhancing the customer experience.
When we talk about quality in a Contact Center service, we refer to its ability to meet both the needs and expectations of a customer. For instance, if only the needs are met, but not the expectations, in other words, if the user solves the problem, but has to wait in line for more than 15 minutes and explain his problem three times, his level of satisfaction will be low.
But, when we focus on Contact Center quality assurance, there are major inefficiencies caused by manual, costly, slow, and subjective auditing processes and that is why artificial intelligence solutions come into play.
Today we have tools such as Speech Analytics that allow us to optimize the monitoring and auditing processes. These technologies make quality management more efficient, both by managing the performance and skills of individual agents and by evaluating overall quality indicators for the company and help to create quality control programs that ensure continuous improvement and business growth.
Download Now: Quality Management in the Contact Center
What efficiency issues do we face when performing quality audits?
The sample of calls you can audit.
The volume of calls to be audited is very small, 5 to 10 calls per month per agent, when each agent can make up to 50 or 60 calls per day. Not having a representative sample may result in having an unrepresentative perception of the business and the impossibility to determine how these failures, inefficiencies, or customer dissatisfaction are really affecting the service. In addition, given that the quality processes are random, by the time the problem is detected, it has been a long time since the customer expressed it.
Subjectivity.
Traditional quality audits are subjective and depend on the auditor, despite being based on a parameterized script. Some parameters such as sympathy or politeness are highly subjective and emotional, difficult to assess objectively.
Audit time vs. agent feedback time.
When call quality audits are performed manually, the auditor spends a lot of time on the audit and very little time on agent feedback, which leads to gaps in agent training and performance monitoring.
What are the benefits of Quality Audit Automation with AI and Speech Analytics?
Artificial intelligence solutions dedicated to call analysis with Speech Analytics bring numerous benefits to Contact Center quality and, simultaneously, to agent training and coaching, which translates into a better customer experience.
With Speech Analytics it is possible to analyze 100% of the conversations automatically and in a short time. It allows you to extract data from interactions for quality control and general metrics such as call duration, talk time, and silences. In addition, keyword and sentiment analysis brings to light hidden data that cannot be detected by eavesdropping. All this makes the auditing process more agile and objective.
For Contact Center quality:
- Evaluating the quality of 100% of voice calls faster, with less subjectivity and greater accuracy, making processes more efficient and better.
- Ensuring script compliance and reducing missed calls due to non-compliance.
- Contact Center processes becoming unified and improved.
- Individual indicators are aligned with company indicators to assess how agent performance impacts business results.
To train and coach agents:
- Evaluating and quantifying agent performance.
- Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of all agents and assessing the gap between the skills required by the operation and the actual skills offered by the team.
- Detecting and prioritizing agents in need of training.
- Reducing training time for new agents.
For customer experience:
- Reducing silence and hold times.
- Making calls more personalized and tailored to customer needs.
- Getting every customer evaluated, providing the company with information about their expectations and needs, to satisfy them.
- Quick and effective detection of calls with arguments or potential issues to troubleshoot them as soon as possible.
With solutions based on artificial intelligence such as Recordia, Contact Centers can automate the quality control of their processes and their service to enhance their key indicators, provide a better customer experience, and a higher incentivization of agents through training and coaching adapted to their needs.
Integrating Speech Analytics with business intelligence means going beyond quality control in contact centers and achieving another level of service quality. Agents work more productively and, therefore, customers are more satisfied. Continuous improvement is what allows a company to become more competitive because it not only aims at quality but also at excellence.
Find out how Recordia helps Contact Centers automate quality audit processes by clicking here.
by Laura Álvarez | Apr. 2022 | Call Recording
Microsoft Teams is an effective collaboration tool, and it is transforming the way millions of people work every day. That’s why companies, in their quest to reduce costs and increase productivity, are incorporating Microsoft Teams as a phone system for both internal and external use because of its out-of-the-box installation, scalability, affordability, and usability. With a single application, Microsoft Teams can support multi-channel communications including video, voice, chat and file sharing.
While it is undeniable that the adoption of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) has been a benefit to businesses, there are highly regulated industries, such as finance, that face challenges with its use, such as ensuring strict regulatory compliance.
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The Microsoft Teams compliance challenge
In the current context, companies face the challenge of knowing and complying with complex and demanding regulations depending on the industry in which they operate or the location of the customers they do business with, such as MiFID II, GDPR, PCI DSS, Dodd-Frank Act or CCPA. These regulations have in common that they contemplate and require the recording of calls with customers to protect the user from possible abuses that may be carried out by companies.
For example, in the financial sector, both in the European Union and the United States, the regulations require the recording of commercial communications that lead to a transaction, whether they are via PBX, cell phones, video, chat, email, unified communication platforms or any other channel.
In addition, regulations are not limited to recording; financial industry regulations and others, such as data protection regulations, also require firms to securely store these communications for several years, as well as to be able to provide full reconstructions of transactions when customers or regulators demand it. In some cases, these reconstructions must be provided within 72 hours.
How to choose the right Microsoft Teams call recording provider?
Omni-channel and the benefit of centralizing all interactions on a single platform.
Companies must have a system for recording and storing all communications including Microsoft Teams calls, such as the one provided by the Recordia solution, which means not having to maintain and work in separate recording systems and databases, which contributes to an increase in efficiency and security as well as a significant reduction in costs.
Other benefits of using a single solution for recording communications are:
- Enable complete business conversations to be reconstructed and requests to be addressed and investigations to be completed within regulatory timelines.
- Capture and archive all compliance content.
- Ensure the same archiving and retention rules are applied across all communication channels to meet regulatory requirements.
What to consider when recording calls with Microsoft Teams?
Including Microsoft Teams calls in interaction recording solutions is imperative to meet the technical privacy requirements of the regulations.
But what should companies ask themselves when choosing a compliant call recording solution? Here are the key questions:
- What call recording regulations must your industry comply with? This could affect the functionality that your MS Teams call recording provider will need to provide you with.
- What volume of traffic should be recorded for audio, video, and chat calls? This is important as recording storage will be an important requirement.
- How do employees communicate internally and externally? For example, do employees use voice call features, video meetings, screen sharing, and MS Teams chat? If so, you will need to ensure that all these forms of interactions are captured, stored, and easily retrievable.
- Where will the recordings be stored? This is an important element to consider as some solutions may be better equipped and experienced in certain storage situations.
Complete conversational intelligence solutions such as Recordia allow capturing 100% of omnichannel interactions, including 1-to-1 calls, video calls, and Microsoft Teams conferences, where their custody is securely centralized on a single platform, avoiding that the recordings are scattered in other programs and that there are different rules, custody periods and traceability on the recordings, allowing companies to address numerous international regulations with a single solution.
Find out more about Recordia and its connector for Microsoft Teams by clicking here.
by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Speech Analytics
Customer service takes place when, at any time, a company and its employees serve a person who is buying, considering the product or service, or has a problem or complaint. Whatever the occasion, customer service is the most important in ensuring a good customer experience.
No matter how large the company, customer service managers become the face of the brands, which means that every efficient and prompt service performed translates into a customer experience that helps determine customer reputation and loyalty.
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The importance of CX today
For decades, companies have simply used metrics and KPIs to measure efficiencies, such as the number of calls answered, call duration, and resolution rates.
But now that organizations are focusing their efforts on customer experience, it follows that these metrics and KPIs must take a more customer-centric view.
Brands are now looking for ways and technology in which their key metrics can measure overall contact center performance and gather actionable information that can improve agent performance while listening closely to the Voice of the Customer.
Best practices for improving customer experience
Offering quality customer service doesn’t just mean hiring new employees, but in many cases, it is about carrying out some best practices that make you get closer to your customers’ needs. Here are 4 practices you can implement to improve the customer experience:
Getting to know the customer and boosting loyalty
Listening carefully to the needs and comments made by customers during calls to customer service helps to follow up on possible complaints or problems that may arise. Listening to all this collected data makes it easier for agents to empathize with customers, improving the quality of service and, with it, the customer experience.
When customers feel they are not getting good service, they are likely to look to the competition for answers. With data collected from AI technologies such as Sentiment Analysis and Speech Analytics, it is possible to better understand customers’ needs, improve their experience and thus increase loyalty and reduce churn.
Personalization of service and offers
Through AI technologies such as Speech Analytics, it is possible to identify customers who are more likely to respond favorably to specific offers. Speech analytics can uncover buying habits and trends to determine which offers are tailored to customers’ needs and thus adjust the attention given to them, improving satisfaction and experience.
The importance of training
Training customer service teams are the foundation for delivering an excellent customer experience. Knowing the root cause of customer dissatisfaction through Sentiment Analysis and the data obtained through Speech Analytics facilitates the creation of scripts and techniques that work best with customers. Training individual agents as needed and empowering them with real scripts and quality content will lead to more effective handling of requests and queries, improving the customer experience.
Quality controls and audits
Contact Centers are or should be, extensions of the brands and, therefore, must conform to the communication methods established by the brands. It is important for customer experience and satisfaction that brands align their behavior with their messages and attitude, otherwise, customer retention and loyalty will be very difficult.
With Speech Analytics technologies, processes are automated and streamlined, and calls are analyzed according to quality templates to offer more complete feedback to agents, providing better training for them and improving the quality of service, which translates into increased customer satisfaction.
All companies are focusing on the experience as a differentiating element and competitive advantage, and that is why with the help of conversational intelligence solutions such as Recordia, companies can have a complete and objective view of what happens with customers at all points of contact, giving rise to innovation and correction of inefficiencies in the processes.
If you want to know how conversational intelligence solutions like Recordia help to improve customer experience, click here.
by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Speech Analytics
Marketing and sales professionals know that satisfied customers mean success for the brand/company. It is therefore very important to know their needs and interests, as it will allow you to offer a better service and maximize results. In addition, Contact Centers are, or should be, extensions of the brands and, therefore, they must adjust to the communication methods established by the brands.
When we focus on sales verification processes, there are major inefficiencies when done manually and that is why, by bringing conversational intelligence into play, Contact Centers will be able to improve processes and recover sales that may be at risk of being lost.
Download Now: Sales Analysis and Verification in Contact Centers
Sales verification processes
At present, sales verification is practically manual by means of eavesdropping, which only allows the verification of a very low percentage of calls. Therefore, manual sales verification is practically random and inefficient. In addition, this manual process causes the verifications to be delayed, occurring in a longer period than recommended and causing the sale to go cold and, with it, the chances of closing it satisfactorily.
The automation of sales verification is essential, among others, for 2 reasons:
- Reduction of verification times. Automation makes it possible to perform sales verification on 100% of calls on the same day the sale occurs, reducing verification times and recovery times for customers with failed sales.
- Compliance with the quality standards of the sales process. Automation ensures that the sales cycle (sales, analysis, and verification) is homogeneous throughout the organization, checking for malpractice, preventing fraud, and ensuring good practices and compliance with company standards.
Conversational intelligence helps sales verification
Given the inefficiencies that exist in current sales verification processes and the large volume of sales calls to be verified, it is considered essential to turn to conversational intelligence technologies that enable analysis and monitoring of 100% of calls and help improve telephone sales, automating, and verifying the entire process and reducing time and costs.
Benefits of using conversational intelligence for sales processes:
- Increase the quality of sales, discovering trends and best practices.
- Identify and recover calls to close additional sales.
- Verify that calls that result in sales are according to legal requirements.
Conversational intelligence solutions, such as Recordia, allow, in calls identified and categorized as sales, to analyze if the agents completely read the contracts and legal sales requirements.
Through Speech Analytics technologies, it is possible to detect, analyze and check the part of the conversation where the script of the legal/contractual texts of the telephone sale is read. In case of detection of failures, the sale will be automatically cataloged as “sale with failures”, alerting and facilitating the subsequent analysis by the Contact Center managers or by the sales managers of the companies that hire them.
This automatic legal compliance analysis through conversational intelligence helps contact centers and brands to reduce verification times and compliance with quality standards in the sales process, ensuring that there is no malpractice and avoiding fraud. The automatic categorization of sales with failures at the level of legal requirements will help to alert and verify this type of call in a faster way by the supervisor so that, in case of a callback, the problem can be solved in a more efficient way, reducing the possibility of losing the sale.
If you want to discover how Recordia helps you to verify sales through conversational intelligence, click here.
by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Speech Analytics
A quality Call Center is one that not only seeks to fulfill its objective as a company but also satisfies the needs of its employees and customers. By having a Call Center, companies can obtain multiple benefits, among others: improving customer experience by offering a higher quality service, attracting new customers, and promoting cross-selling.
Download Now: Quality Management in the Contact Center
Call centers are an essential component of customer service teams, and their performance can be routinely evaluated in order to closely monitor team efficiency and seek the information needed to improve the customer experience. To achieve this, it is necessary to apply metrics that allow diagnosing, follow up, and defining improvement plans, making an efficient and effective evaluation of the Call Center performance y indicators known as KPIs.
If you want to know how Artificial Intelligence technologies, such as Recordia, help to visualize important aspects of the operation through customizable KPIs, click here.
What are KPIs?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of a Call Center are metrics that allow quantifying performance and provide relevant data for making the right decisions.
On a day-to-day basis, KPIs provide a complete view of business data, and, from this, it is possible to detect trends and make decisions. Generally, these metrics are measurable and monitorable values.
Although most call center managers are aware of the most common indicators to measure call center management, most of them are based on quantifiable data such as the number of calls or service times. But qualitative data such as the number of calls that ended in customer churn or how an agent’s attention is to be able to promote better future practices should also be considered.
Top 10 KPIs in Call Centers
In Call Centers, many of the main KPIs are directly or indirectly related to customer satisfaction, but they are also related to employee productivity, an aspect with great influence on Call Center profitability.
The most important key indicators of call centers can be divided into 2 main groups:
Quality and customer experience indicators
- Customer satisfaction: Measures the level of customer satisfaction through a survey with scales from 1 to 5 asking how satisfied they are with the interaction they just had with the agent.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): measures customer loyalty and predicts the likelihood that they will recommend you through a direct question about the customer’s intention to recommend the product, service, or brand. Those who are between 9 and 10, called promoters, are those who are considered loyal customers and willing to recommend.
- Average response time and Abandon rate: The first measures the average time a customer must wait to be attended and the second measures the percentage of unattended calls, i.e., when the customer hangs up the phone before getting to speak to an agent. Related to each other, they can give signals of processes that are not working properly.
- Contact quality: This is usually done by monitoring and recording service agent interactions with customers. In addition to being a key metric for the customer experience, it is also a key metric for the performance of each agent. It evaluates important criteria to achieve quality interactions such as, for example, adherence to the script correctly in greeting, commercialization, and farewell.
- Churn: measures the percentage of users who cancel a contract or stop using the company’s services during a given period.
- Overlaps and silences: measure the percentage of overlaps and silences in interaction to learn key information about the agent’s treatment or about a possible problem or discussion. In addition, the percentage of silences in an interaction can reveal efficiency problems in the processes by which the agent obtains the necessary information during the call.
Call Center productivity and efficiency indicators
- Service level: It measures the percentage of calls handled in a given period and determines whether agents go fast enough between calls. This indicator helps to determine the number of agents needed to handle the volume of calls received, i.e., to size the Call Center.
- First Call Resolution (FCR): represents the percentage of calls in which the agent completely attends to the customer’s needs without having to transfer or call them back.
- Average Handling Time (AHT): measures the average time of customer interactions, considering both talk time and time on hold as well as time spent by the agent after the call.
- Call volume: Case volume is an indicator like service level but is more focused on individual productivity. It measures the number of calls an agent receives in a given period and it is common for a minimum daily quota to be established for each agent.
Currently, there are AI-powered speech analytics and conversational intelligence solutions that provide these indicators automatically, increasing this way efficiency by being able to quickly respond to inconveniences, poor performances, or the risk of losing customers.
If you want to know how Recordia helps to visualize important aspects of the operation through customizable KPIs, click here.
by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Speech Analytics
Digital banking and the use of Fintech have experienced a resurgence, becoming very popular. But, as strange as it may sound, there is another long-established channel where financial institutions are experiencing high levels of traffic: Call Centers.
Increased waiting times, the arrival of new competitors and products on the market, and the crisis of confidence in the industry have significantly reduced customer loyalty. Human empathy is the most important factor in building long-term banking relationships, and banking speech analytics solutions help do just that. Therefore, improving the customer experience is becoming a high priority for all organizations, even in sectors such as finance.
Download Now: Churn Reduction in the Banking Industry
How can Speech Analytics and AI technologies improve customer service in banking?
Speech Analytics is one of the fastest growing applications to identify and detect good service quality in order to retain as many profitable customers as possible. Speech Analytics analyzes all calls and customer interactions on different channels, detects phrases or keywords that indicate a possible bad customer experience and alerts the company to take preventive actions.
Speech Analytics banking solutions can help agents, thanks to natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. They help to better understand customers and even anticipate their needs and provide agents with the right in-call assistance, alerts, notifications, etc. Thus, it is possible to drive a superior customer experience.
Speech Analytics banking solutions can also provide previously unpublished insights to reduce customer call volume, achieve first contact resolution (FCR) and reduce average handle time (AHT).
5 Ways Speech Analytics and AI technologies help banks improve Customer Service
100% of calls analyzed
With Speech Analytics, it is possible to identify patterns and important information in banking Call Center calls that reveal possible customer churn. Establishing important keywords such as ” upset”, “annoyed” or ” switching to another bank” will help financial institutions’ Call Centers to detect problematic calls and thus attend to them immediately, trying to improve the user experience, increasing loyalty, and reducing customer churn.
Identification of customer Sentiment
Thanks to machine learning and NLP (Natural Language Processing), it allows identifying the feelings of the different interventions of a call and their level of satisfaction. It is an opportunity to explore the customer’s mindset and study the perception of the product or service from the user’s point of view. Sentiment Analysis is a great tool for an in-depth analysis of products or services, reputation management or customer service analysis, among others, all related to customer experience and, therefore, to the quality of customer service.
Quality control
With conversational analysis technologies, supervisors can analyze whether agents are adhering to the established script and whether they are following quality standards. Keeping track of process quality helps banks improve customer service and maximize the customer experience.
On the other hand, not only adherence to the script helps to improve quality but also the reduction of prolonged silence times. Prolonged silences of 20% or 30% can hide problems that can cause additional costs and gaps in service quality and customer experience.
Agent training
With all this information extracted from Speech Analytics, supervisors can train their agents and identify best practices and sales techniques. In addition, these calls can serve as an example for agents, newly hired or not, helping them to develop scripts based on real experiences to be more successful in their future calls.
Compliance and security
Regulatory compliance is essential in the banking industry and Speech Analytics plays a key role in driving process compliance and improving overall agent performance. Because it automatically scores and analyzes all calls, the risk of non-compliance-related penalties and lawsuits is reduced.
In addition, the use of other AI technologies such as Biometric Voiceprint Identification streamlines identification processes, improving the customer experience and, in turn, ensuring regulatory compliance and security through the verification of consent records and detection of spoofing fraud.
If you want to learn how Recordia with its Speech Analytics and its conversational intelligence solution helps to improve customer service in the banking sector, click here.
See you soon!
by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Biometric Identification
Faced with document fraud and identity theft, along with new threats such as cybercrime and changes in international data protection regulations, companies are implementing new technological solutions to help them deal with all these issues. One of these technologies is biometrics, which is rapidly being implemented as one of the most reliable methods of customer identification and authentication, especially in sectors that are highly vulnerable due to the type of data and information they handle, such as the banking sector.
In addition, the use of new ways of operating through digital or telephone channels makes it essential to use technologies such as biometrics to ensure regulatory compliance and protect customers’ personal data through increasingly secure and reliable authentications.
But what is biometrics, what types exist, and what are the benefits it brings?
<<< Explore here all the benefits of Voice Biometric Identification >>>
What is Biometric Identification and Authentication?
Biometrics is the general name used to refer to any biological measurement or physical or behavioral characteristics, specific to each individual, in order to authenticate their identity.
Biometric identification, therefore, is that which verifies the identity of individuals according to the chosen biometric characteristic.
There are different types of biometric technologies:
- Physiological measurements: these can be morphological or biological, such as, for example, fingerprints, finger shape, vein pattern, eye pattern (iris and retina) or face shape.
- Behavioral measurements: the most common form is voice recognition, but there are others such as signature dynamics or gestures.
It should be considered that not all types of measurements offer the same level of reliability since some of them, such as signature dynamics or gestures, may be subject to factors such as stress or are not as stable during the life of the individual.
On the other hand, it is also necessary to differentiate between identification and biometric authentication. Identification consists of determining a person’s identity by capturing the biometric element of our choice. As for biometric authentication, also known as verification, it has to do more with a subsequent process in which the data of a person’s characteristics are compared with the biometric fingerprint stored in a database, which is associated with that particular person, in order to determine their similarity.
Main benefits of Biometric Identification and Authentication
Improve security and help with fraud detection.
Biometrics solutions are one of the most secure ways for customers to identify themselves. They don’t have to share their passwords or answer security questions that are often forgotten. In terms of authentication, proving that a person is real by verifying tangible real-life traits inherent to the person, such as voice or their fingerprint, offers companies high levels of reliability as these are traits that are very difficult to supplant.
In fact, it is almost impossible with current technologies to replicate biometrics such as voice, fingerprints, or iris patterns. To give an example, there is a one in 64 billion chance that your fingerprint will exactly match someone else’s
Therefore, highly secured industries, such as banking and healthcare, use biometric technologies for customer identification and authentication that offer greater security and are almost fraud-proof against identity theft because of the risks involved if this were to occur and if the data were to be exposed.
Increases customer satisfaction and the efficiency of telephone agents.
In addition to being more secure and fraud-free, customer satisfaction increases due to faster identification and authentication. In Call Centers such as banking, customer identification usually takes between 2 and 5 minutes and in digital applications there is the difficulty, in many cases, to remember passwords or security questions. In fact, according to numerous studies, 20% of potential customers fail to register in online businesses because of the complexity of the process or do not return to access because they forgot the password or security questions. It is, therefore, especially beneficial to use biometrics for these processes, reducing them to a matter of seconds.
And this not only increases customer satisfaction but also makes the telephone agents or managers who identify and authenticate customers in their processes more effective and efficient, reducing waiting and service times and increasing CX.
If you want to discover our biometrics solution, Recordia Biometric Identification, click here.
See you soon!
by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Call Recording
The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented pressure on businesses, including supply chain disruption, lockdown, new ways of buying and new ways of working. These changes had a sudden impact on customer service centers.
- Operationally, call centers had to adapt to rapidly evolving home lockdown rules and other restrictions that affected workplaces and workforces around the world.
- From the customers’ point of view, they needed new solutions to new problems. The unparalleled growth of e-commerce and direct-to-consumer sales or the sudden shift to new purchasing channels meant that customers were calling, emailing and messaging with new requests and problems that companies often hadn’t even contemplated a year earlier.
All of this coupled with the sheer volume of calls customer service centers received during the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive disruptions it caused to customer service across all industries, customer service centers had to adapt quickly to the new situation we were in. Many companies doubled down on cloud-based tools, AI technologies and other tools that helped reduce agent workloads and address customer needs.
As a result, since the COVID-19 pandemic, mobile networks have become vitally important to the work of customer service center sales teams who have, in many cases, moved their workplace from their offices to their homes.
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The impact of COVID-19 on salesforce strategy and technology
According to a recent survey focused on the impact of COVID-19 on call centers, 70% of call centers around the world expect that they will continue to have agents teleworking from home. And, in addition to this, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 92% of respondents experienced an increased volume of interactions across traditional and digital channels and of these, 57% experienced it on phone calls.
Thus, it is observed that phone calls intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic and that, in addition, it becomes imperative to be able to manage these sales team calls from mobile networks, which will allow teams to continue teleworking or even manage these calls from any other location outside the office.
On the other hand, COVID-19 also brought with it an acceleration of the move of call centers to the cloud. With the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that fixed-line telephony, in the face of these extraordinary cases and the restrictions imposed, would not work at all due to the impossibility of going to the offices. If call centers wanted to be prepared, they should move their business infrastructure to the cloud so that they could work easily from anywhere, with any device connected to the Internet, without reducing their productivity.
For this reason, some cloud PBX technologies have emerged, such as Recordia Telephony Service, which allows sales agents to operate around the world by providing an international telephone network for mobile lines that allows them to call from anywhere. These platforms operate over the Internet, allowing companies to record all their calls in a secure environment.
AI technologies in mobile networks to help the salesforce
In addition to these cloud PBX technologies that enable call recording on mobile networks, AI technologies are also being added to help the sales team in this new industry reality.
As a result, Speech Analytics is becoming increasingly important in customer service centers and as an essential tool for sales teams. Speech Analytics is a technological tool, powered by Artificial Intelligence, that automates the process of listening and analyzing conversations with customers. It extracts, analyzes and processes key information from customer interactions that would be impossible to do manually.
Speech Analytics helps sales teams to get real information from real customers, understanding customers’ wants and needs by listening to exactly what is being said. It also enables the identification of sales opportunities and analysis of the current market and trends. Finally, it allows, among others, the detection of failed calls and the training of agents with real scripts.
But it should also be noted that some more advanced voice analysis software, such as Recordia, allows not only text analysis but also customer sentiment analysis (Sentiment Analysis) through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
These AI technologies that can be associated with call recording of sales teams both in the office and teleworking (via mobile networks) allow to get to the depth of customer dissatisfaction by revealing the weak points and underlying reasons why customers are dissatisfied with products or services, essential for the improvement of customer experience.
Certainly, teleworking is here to stay, and sales teams are adapting to include mobile networks among their work teams and so AI technologies that are starting to be used on fixed lines can be used for mobile lines as well.
If you want to learn more about Recordia Telephony Service, our cloud telephony service, and call recording, click here.
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by Laura Álvarez | Mar. 2022 | Biometric Identification
As a result of the digitalization of banking, attacks such as identity theft and financial fraud or extortion have increased and KYC or “Know Your Customer” emerged as a preventive and security measure in the identification and authentication of customers.
Although for online banking transactions through browsers or APPs, banks already have identification measures such as fingerprint, passwords, or two-factor authentication (2FA); for calls, identification would be reduced to the request of data such as national identification number, address, or security questions, information susceptible to being supplanted. That is why many financial institutions are betting on KYC automation through Artificial Intelligence technologies that help to identify customers, especially in calls made by the Call Center, allowing to reduce identification times, greater accuracy of data, and provide better customer service while ensuring regulatory compliance in real-time.
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What is KYC?
KYC or “Know Your Customer” is the process of obtaining customer information for the purpose of accurately identifying customers, either through facial recognition, fingerprint, or any other human trait likely to be unique, such as voice. The KYC process is typically carried out by companies and other financial institutions when opening accounts with them or performing various banking transactions.
In Europe, KYC is regulated by the AML5 and GDPR, which are binding throughout the European Union. KYC aims to provide standards and methodologies that facilitate proper user verification compliance.
Broadly speaking, the verification process under KYC consists of collecting, analyzing information, and keeping it updated. A common standard does not yet exist and its regulation and adaptation is a developing challenge, as regulations vary by country and industry. The KYC process in the financial sector requires a more complex, specific methodology with more steps to ensure total reliability and security, due to the complexity of the sector.
KYC can be divided into two levels depending on how strict the identification is, with CDD (Customer Due Diligence) being a “laxer” identification and EDD (Enhanced Due Diligence) being recommended by regulators, especially for customers who are prone to commit crimes such as money laundering.
However, it is important to understand that KYC checks cover much more than basic identity information, but also check whether the user appears on international PEP (Politically Exposed Persons) lists, assess the risks associated with the customer, and monitor and track customer transactions.
Benefits of Automated KYC
Originally, KYC verification and registration of new customers were done by hand. An employee checked one by one all supporting documents of the potential customer, as well as their appearance in international registers and lists. Performing KYC manually involves long verification times, a great human effort that can be accompanied by possible errors and high costs, among other things.
New technologies have revolutionized KYC and remote identity verifications. Artificial Intelligence technologies have led to the automation of these tasks, making it possible to reduce waiting times and increase data accuracy, while ensuring real-time compliance. Some of the benefits of KYC automation include:
- Prevent fraud.
- Regulatory compliance.
- Reduce costs and time.
- Eliminate human error.
- Improve customer satisfaction by offering a fast, easy and secure experience.
KYC and Voice Biometric Identification for the financial sector
Some technologies based on Artificial Intelligence such as Voice Biometric Identification, in services such as Recordia, help to manage large call volumes and facilitate customer identification and authentication processes in banking call centers.
Customer identification and authentication in financial institutions takes between 2 and 5 minutes on average for each call and involves a large number of security questions, which lengthens waiting and handling times and has a serious impact on the customer experience.
To improve these processes and streamline them, automated KYC technologies, such as Recordia’s Voice Biometric Identification, help financial institutions to ensure regulatory compliance in real-time by being able to manage data processing consents and improve customer satisfaction while preventing fraud and identity theft, thanks to the fact that the voiceprint detected by the technology is unique for each person.
Learn more about Recordia Voice Biometric Identification and how to comply with KYC by clicking here.
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by Laura Álvarez | Feb. 2022 | Call Recording
While the value of consumers’ personal data keeps increasing, the exposure to organizations collecting their information for business purposes is also increasing, especially considering the day-to-day presence of new technologies and the Internet.
The new reality in which we find ourselves after the COVID-19 pandemic has given way to more channels than ever through which we communicate and an expanded scope of interactions with companies through different devices: landlines, mobile lines, SMS, video conferencing, digital messaging… And because of this increase in the number of channels through which we communicate with companies, there has been more widespread use of personal data. This has given rise, in turn, to the emergence of many regulations that seek to control the use made of our personal data.
In general, the fundamental objective of these recent regulations and business directives, together with other laws and codes of conduct at the country level, is to protect customers and their personal data, prevent fraud, store consent and ensure transparency in the use of this data. Companies that do not comply with the requirements can face penalties for non-compliance, severe sanctions, and reputational damage.
One of the major data protection regulations is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and below we tell you, what it is and what aspects must be considered to comply with it.
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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the privacy and security law drafted and passed by the European Union (EU), which came into force on May 25, 2018, and regulates the processing by individuals, companies, or organizations of personal data related to EU citizens. But, although it was drafted and approved by the EU, it imposes obligations on organizations everywhere, whenever they target or collect data related to EU citizens
The GDPR represents one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation in data regulation in recent times. It affects how companies around the world approach their strategies for external data protection (such as data security) as well as internal data access and use. It aims to give EU citizens more transparency and control over their personal data. It also modernizes and consolidates the data protection rules of the individual EU member states under the previous EU Directive into a single regulation.
GDPR Compliance Checklist
Achieving GDPR compliance shouldn’t seem like a struggle. Therefore, we have created a GDPR Compliance Checklist that can help you protect your organization, safeguard your customers’ data, and avoid costly fines for non-compliance. Although this checklist is far from being an exhaustive legal document, it will help you get an idea of how to overcome GDPR compliance. Are you ready to comply with this regulation? Check it out below.
Explicit consent record:
To comply with the GDPR, companies must keep a record of consent, and this consent cannot be implied as it arises before this regulation. That is, companies must obtain consent explicitly and only after informing the caller of the reason. This consent must comply with the following points:
- Consent is freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.
- Consent requests are “clearly distinguishable from other matters” and are presented in “clear and plain language“.
- Interested individuals may withdraw previously given consent whenever they wish to do so, and their decision must be respected.
- Children under the age of 13 can only give consent with parental permission.
- You retain the documentary proof of consent.
- When you update your privacy policy, you inform existing customers.
Legal basis and transparency:
The following points must comply at this level:
- You perform an information audit to determine what information you process and who has access to it. Organizations that have at least 250 employees or perform high-risk data processing must maintain an up-to-date and detailed list of their processing activities and be prepared to show that list to regulators upon request. The best way to demonstrate compliance with the GDPR is through a data protection impact assessment.
- You have a legal justification for your data processing activities. It is only valid when the processing is necessary for:
- Comply with a contract.
- Satisfy legal requirements.
- Protect the interests of one or more participants.
- For security or the data is in the public interest.
- Responds to the legitimate interests of the registrar, provided that those interests are not overridden by the interests of data subjects that require protection of personal data.
- You provide clear information about the processing of their data and the legal justification in your privacy policy. You should tell customers that you are collecting their data and why, as well as explain how it is processed, who has access to it and how you keep it secure. This information should be included in your privacy policy and provided to data subjects at the time you collect their data. It should be presented “in a concise, transparent, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language.”
Data security:
The following points must be complied with:
- Personal data is stored securely, and appropriate security controls are implemented to prevent any unauthorized persons from accessing stored personal data.
- Personal data is encrypted, pseudonymized or anonymized whenever possible.
- You conduct a data protection impact assessment whenever you plan to use individuals’ data in a way that is likely to result in a high risk to their rights and freedoms.
- You have a formal process implemented to notify the authorities (within 72 hours) and your data subjects in the event of a data breach.
Responsibility and management:
The following points must be complied with:
- Your company has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) if it is necessary, where processing is carried out by a public authority, the processing is the core business of a large-scale organization or special category data is processed.
- You train staff to be aware of data protection.
- A data processing agreement is signed between your organization and any third-party processing personal data on your behalf.
- If your organization is outside the EU, you appoint a representative within one of the EU members’ states.
Privacy rights:
The following points must be complied with:
- It’s easy for your customers to request access to their personal information.
- It is easy for your customers to update their own personal information to keep it accurate.
- The deletion of data that is no longer needed is automated.
- It’s easy for your customers to request to stop processing their data.
- It’s easy for your customers to request to have their personal data deleted.
- It is easy for your customers to request to have their data transferred to them or to a third party.
- It is easy for your customers to object to you processing their data.
If you want to learn more about compliance and GDPR, click here.
Find below the document where you can check each of these conditions and get an idea of whether you comply with the GDPR.
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