Nearly every insurance organization—from local agents to corporate headquarters–uses integrated voice response technology to interact with callers and automate services. Thanks to DSP, NLP, AI, and other developments, there’s a growing ecosystem of voice technologies beyond IVR striving to improve both enterprise operations and the customer experience (although nearly 90 percent of people still hate phone menus.)
Learn how enterprises benefit from each category in the current voice analytics ecosystem: assistants, authentication, emotions, profiling, and risk identification.
Voice Assistants
Many of us are now quite comfortable with giving verbal instructions to a host of devices: smartphones, smart watches, smart speakers, cars, TV remotes, and more.
These voice applications are called assistants for the obvious reason that they help us with tasks. Familiar technologies include Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant. Once configured and combined with IoT and automation, assistants provide powerful efficiency gains.
Amazon’s Alexa for Business is already available to help organizations running more efficient meetings, make better use of facilities, and interact more productively with customer service applications such as Salesforce and ServiceNow.
Voice Authentication
We now use our voice to unlock our phones, access our bank accounts, and other identity-based activities. For instance, with the insurance app on your smartphone, it’s easier to say “My voice is my password” compared to typing a 12-character, multi-symbol secure password on the tiny keyboard. Our unique voice makes a great personal identifier.
Easier, stronger security is also great for business. Authentication is a first step towards fraud and theft prevention. Industry estimates gauge the level of fraud in insurance claims at 10 percent. Overall, fraud and data hacks cost companies worldwide trillions-with-a-T each year. Estimates place the cost at $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
It’s not just a problem for big enterprises. For small and midsize businesses that experience a significant data breach, 60 percent go out of business within six months.
(Authentication is big business, too. In 2021, Microsoft spent $19.7 billion to acquire Nuance, a provider of voice technologies including authentication.)
Emotions
Voice technology is growing a heart. Several companies can now recognize and report on the emotional content of speech.
For example, analyzing the emotional content of a conversation in real time reduces call center costs and increases customer satisfaction. In insurance, emotional recognition paired with AI can route customer calls to the representatives predicted to be the best at resolving a policyholder’s issue. When productivity and call success goes up, operating costs go down.
Such emotional analysis based on voice can also help with recruiting, sales, and collections—all of which help boost the bottom line.
Profiling
Profiling people based on voice comes instinctually for us. When we greet a friend, we instantly know from the sound of their voice whether they are happy, sad, excited, nervous, tired. For decades, investigators have profiled people through their voice using polygraph testing and vocal stress analysis.
Today, with the help of analytics and AI, we are discovering just how much information the voice contains. In a YouTube presentation, Dr. Rita Singh demonstrates that a recording of a person phoning in a bomb threat contains data identifying the caller’s
- Sex
- Age
- Height and weight
- Ethnicity
- Facial appearance
- Region of origin
- Drug use
- Speaking environment
- Communication device
- And more.
It’s even possible to deduce much a person’s facial appearance from analyzing their voice. The process is also reversible—voice analytics can predict the sound of someone’s voice based on their facial features.
Insurance claims investigators using voice profiling can uncover valuable new information within audio and video evidence. Voice profiling also has multiple applications in physical and mental health care, security, and policing.
Risk Identification
Vocal characteristics that are independent of language can be identified and used to pinpoint risk. Statements and responses to questions can be scored from low risk to high. The resulting risk profile helps to separate the majority of applicants, claimants, vendors, partners and others who are trustworthy and provide them with expedited or enhanced services.
For example, Clearspeed voice analytics provides risk identification that is automated, unbiased, language agnostic, and device independent. Results are available at scale in 24 hours, with near-real time processing capability on the near horizon. Clients around the world are using Clearspeed voice analytics in diverse sectors such as insurance, human capital management, defense, and government.
For insurance companies, this allows the majority of policyholders to enjoy faster resolution of their claims, plus lower premiums due to reduced fraud. This also helps an organization focus expensive investigative resources on the few cases that truly warrant the expense.
Designing Your Enterprise Voice Ecosystem
Each category in the voice analytics ecosystem offers value to enterprises. Your opportunity is to design your organization’s portfolio of voice technologies to increase security, optimize operations, and improve customer experience.
To learn more about how Clearspeed voice analytics can integrate with other voice technologies and your existing infrastructure, request a demo today.
If you would like to know more about voice analytics enhances the claims process, request a voice analytics demo today.
