Czech Republic’s largest bank enables customers to authenticate themselves by voice when calling contact center agents

Česká spořitelna customers first in region to say “dobrý den” to a better banking experience through Nuance’s voice biometrics.

Nuance Communications, Inc. announced that Česká spořitelna – the Czech Republic’s largest bank and owned by Erste Bank Group AG – is the first in the country to make mobile banking easier and safer by leveraging Nuance’s voice biometric technology.

The project is part of Česká spořitelna’s recently announced digital banking strategy that enables customers to authenticate themselves by voice when calling their bank.

„Česká spořitelna has deployed Nuance Security Suite voice biometrics technology, which enables customers to simply speak in order to verify their identity with contact center agents. Instead of remembering answers to security questions, PINs or passwords, customers are authenticated through the course of natural conversation with a contact center agent.”, according to the press release.

Nuance’s voice biometrics technology works in the background to measure physical and behavioural characteristics of callers’ voices, matching each legitimate customer with their unique voiceprint to confirm their identity.

“Česká spořitelna is the first Czech Bank to use voice biometrics in its contact center. The technology takes the hassle out of authentication. It’ll be faster, safer and easier for customers compared to having to remember lots of different passwords. It also means our colleagues can focus on helping customers with their banking needs instead of dealing with password resets,” said Bohuslav Hruša, Digital Infrastructure Expert at Česká.

“We have seen a dramatic increase in consumers using voice biometrics around the world. In 2017, the number of enrolled voiceprints doubled to 300 million and biometric technology successfully complete more than five billion transactions,” said Brett Beranek, General Manager, Security, Nuance Communications at Nuance. “We are pleased to support Česká spořitelna on its digital transformation journey by deploying voice biometrics to improve the customer experience and fight fraud, while at the same time driving down contact center costs.”

Česká spořitelnais is the first bank in the Czech Republic to join the growing list of leading enterprises successfully leveraging Nuance’s biometric solutions.

Customers from a diverse set of industries are already enjoying rapid, widespread, customer adoption of the technology. The Australian Taxation Office, ICICI Bank, Santander, TalkTalk and Vodafone Turkey are among the organizations that have each enrolled more than one million voiceprints in their deployment of Nuance’s Security Suite, to easily authenticate customers and prevent fraudsters from gaining illegal access to customer accounts or information.

Nuance Communications is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that can understand, analyze and respond to human language to increase productivity and amplify human intelligence. With decades of domain and artificial intelligence expertise, Nuance works with thousands of organizations – in global industries that include healthcare, telecommunications, automotive, financial services, and retail – to create stronger relationships and better experiences for their customers and workforce.