Victrio Launches Voice-Based Call Screening System
Speaker identification and verification (SIV) solutions provider Victrio yesterday introduced a new voice risk management solution that identifies potential fraudsters calling into a retail or financial services call center by comparing their voices against a voiceprint database of known criminals. If there is a match, authorization can be denied before the damage is done.
The solution, which is hosted by Victrio and offered through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, is geared toward big-ticket online merchants, banks, and other credit card issuers.
"When you make a call, you make it through our system and we do all the screening," says Tony Rajakumar, founder and CEO of Victrio. "We hold onto the audio from the call and start the screening from our database. If we think it’s a fraudster, we can flag the call right away."
As Victrio’s solution gains market use and acceptance, the voiceprint database will grow. As that happens, the company plans to pool information across its client base and allow clients to share voiceprint information, "giving them a second level of protection," Rajakumar says.
Rajakumar expects the solution to be especially effective in stopping the career fraudster, noting that one of the problems with SIV technologies in the past was that there wasn’t a way to connect different fraud incidents to a common thief. "Even if the criminal goes off and buys a fresh batch of stolen identities or gets a new Internet address and PC, we can stop him. Once he opens his mouth, we've got him," he states.
Another limitation of the technology was the storage capacity. "It was always thought that you couldn’t [assemble a database] for more than a few hundred voiceprints, and that if you tried to put more in, you would get a lot of false positives that would make the solution unusable," Rajakumar adds. "This gets around that. It allows us to slice up the database to smaller chunks within which a fraudster is likely to be found. It looks at metadata and ranks callers based on their risk."
The entire process is transparent to callers and protects the privacy of legitimate callers because it does not ask them for any personal information, such as credit card or Social Security number, Rajakumar explains. With it, authorization calls can be shorter, improving customer satisfaction, reducing agent costs per call, and stopping fraud more successfully, he adds.
Merchants, banks or credit card issuers can easily deploy the Victrio voiceprint risk management system; all that is required is a phone and a browser. The company also offers an open application programming interface that makes it easy to integrate with popular call center platforms.