Deutsche Telekom considers expanding use of Nuance voice biometrics after early success

The success of voice biometrics from Nuance for customer authentication has led Deutsche Telekom to consider expanding its use, according to a case study from the technology provider. Nuance is also participating in a new initiative to advance the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.

The client relationship with Deutsche Telekom was originally formed in 2018, with the network operator using Nuance Voice Biometrics as part of Nuance Gatekeeper to authenticate customers calling into its customer service and support centers using their voice.

Deutsche Telekom currently counts more than 400,000 customers and roughly 30,000 contact center agents. Before customers and agents can be connected, however, they need to be authenticated, a process that can otherwise be time-consuming.

Deutsche Telekom completes authentication using Nuance’s voice biometrics when customers say “At Telekom, my voice is my password.” The system then matches the caller’s voice to the stored voice template, to verify that the caller is genuine.

According to Caroline Clemens, senior expert of User Interface Design at Deutsche Telekom, deploying Nuance’s voice biometrics system has also helped increase the overall security posture of the company.

“With voice biometrics, we work in compliance with GDPR, because we don’t store any voice recordings of our customers. Instead, we store a long series of numbers, called a hash,” Clemens explains.

“Criminals can’t gain any information about our customers from these numbers—even if they managed to steal the hash, they couldn’t do anything with it.”

Moving forward, Clemens says Deutsche Telekom intends to bring Nuance’s voice biometrics to additional channels of interaction with the company.

“Currently, voice biometrics is just in our IVR, but the next step would be bringing it to other channels,” says Clemens. “Also, our customers can only have one voice ID profile per phone number, but we’d like to change that. It’d be ideal for customers who have co-signed contracts for the same phone number, or families that live in the same house.”

Deutsche Telekom was the first company in Germany to deploy Nuance’s conversational biometric technology.

Nuance partners with ‘The Academy’ to launch The AI Collaborative

In an eventful time for Nuance, the company has also recently joined forces with The Health Management Academy to launch The AI Collaborative, AINews reports.

The initiative will see various industry partners collaborate on the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions for healthcare.

Nuance was acquired earlier this year by Microsoft, which also confirmed it will contribute to The AI Collaborative’s projects.

“Our members have expressed their desire for a dedicated space to explore AI in healthcare and its enormous potential to improve outcomes and clinical workflow,” comments The Academy CEO Renee DeSilva.

“We are thrilled to expand our partnership with Microsoft and Nuance to introduce The AI Collaborative, a new program at The Academy designed exclusively for clinical and operational executives who lead their organization’s approach to investing in AI as a strategic initiative.”

The launch of The AI Collaborative is officially scheduled for September 2022 and will take place at Microsoft’s corporate HQ facility.

Article Topics

AI  |  authentication  |  biometrics  |  call centers  |  data privacy  |  Deutsche Telekom  |  Nuance Communications  |  voice biometrics