We launched Contact Center AI (CCAI) to kick off our work with the world’s largest call centers to reimagine customer experiences through the power of our Conversational AI. Our approach has shown its value over the last few years: a 2020 study based on CCAI customer interviews projected 20-35% call deflection away from agents, $1.3 million – $3.7 million in agent productivity gains through reduced average call times, and up to 75% reduced effort to manage contact center solutions (New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of Google Cloud Contact Center AI, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, August 2020).

We continue our investment in the space of reimagining customer experience with the launch of Speaker ID today. Speaker ID brings Google’s speech identification technology directly to Google Cloud customers and our contact center partners. Instead of subjecting callers to tedious and circuitous authentication processes, such as phone trees or menus, with Speaker ID, our customers and partners can now initiate service using the most intuitive interface of all: voice.

“We are excited to see Google bring ML-based speaker identification to CCAI. As a launch partner for Google Cloud CCAI, we have seen the impact that Google’s AI technology can have on contact centers. Our customers are excited by the opportunity to add ML-based verification on top of their existing Dialogflow agents with no additional telephony or technology integrations necessary,” said Eric Rossman, VP of Technology Partners and Alliances, at Avaya.

Contact Centers and their need for Speed and Convenience

Calling into a contact center is still the preferred method of support or interaction for many customers. In fact, in 2020, customer preference for voice calls increased by 10 percentage points, to 43%, and was by far the most preferred service channel, with text interactions ranking second at 22% (Aspect Consumer Index Annual Report 2020).

However, in order to receive the most personalized service available, callers still need to pass through archaic authentication processes, requiring them to remember passwords or provide personal information for verification. Not only is this highly inconvenient for the callers, it also significantly slows down the time to query resolution and burns through valuable agent time. While applying AI to these outdated policies can help to an extent, what is required is a complete reimagination of customer interaction that leverages the power of Conversational AI.

Introducing Speaker ID

Speaker ID lets your callers authenticate over the phone, using their own voice. Using machine learning (ML)-based voice identification, Speaker ID identifies and verifies the caller. There are two primary components to using Speaker ID: Enrollment and Verification.

The first time a caller encounters this new system, they will have to enroll. Typically, enrollment starts with authentication using the existing process, after which callers provide a brief voice sample that can be used in lieu of the old process to fast track verification in the future. Google Cloud Speaker ID is “text independent,” meaning that once a user is enrolled, verification can be performed with any audio snippet as short as three seconds. No password phrase is required and the user can say anything they want to authenticate their voice and thus their identity.

Contact Center AI Integration

Speaker ID is directly integrated with Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI platform. Dialogflow CX, within CCAI, allows businesses to architect conversational experiences for their callers. With the integration with Speaker ID, Dialogflow CX can now leverage audio sent for intent detection and entity extraction.

Along with full audio integration, Speaker ID also has pre-built Dialogflow CX components available to easily add enrollment and verification flows to existing or new Dialogflow CX bots. Customers can also configure Dialogflow CX to perform passive verification. This provides a speaker validation check based on the caller’s usual interaction with the voice bot. Users don’t need to be prompted or speak a specific phrase.

Get Started Today

Speaker ID is generally available today. At Google Cloud, we are committed to ensuring that our products and features are aligned with our AI Principles. If you are interested in Speaker ID, there is a review process to help ensure that your use case is aligned with our AI Principles and best practices for using Speaker ID for authentication and security. Contact your GCP seller to get started.

For more information on Speaker ID, visit cloud.google.com/speaker-id. We also encourage you to register for Google Cloud Next 2021 to learn more about our Conversation AI offerings.