We Want YOU to Get This Call

Outbound interactive voice response (IVR) solutions have a variety of applications—ranging from appointment and prescription refill reminders to flight delay notifications, from collections to public safety alerts—across a variety of industries. Outbound IVR technology is even being used by law enforcement officials to check on elderly homebound residents and to issue targeted Amber alerts to parents in specific groups or geographic areas who are most likely to have seen the missing child.

But no matter the message or type of organization from which it originates, outbound campaigns are only effective if they reach their intended audiences. Imagine his reaction when a 75-year-old gentleman answers a call intended for his 21-year-old granddaughter suggesting that she might like to reserve a table for her and her friends at the city’s hottest techno nightclub for this Friday night. Grandpa is not likely to share his granddaughter’s enthusiasm for the music of Daft Punk accompanying the voice message, and is even less likely to reserve a table for himself and his shuffleboard buddies for later in the week.

Making sure that doesn’t happen is not only good business sense, but in the case of a healthcare application that provides test results to patients, for example, failure to reach the right person can be devastating. Allowing confidential medical information to reach the ears of anyone but the patient himself—considered a serious violation of the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA)—can result in severe criminal and civil penalties, including jail time and fines of $100,000 or more.

And while a voice biometrics solution—one that asks the person on the other end of the phone to confirm his identity based on a prerecorded voiceprint—might be useful in some cases, such as the previous healthcare application or one involving a high-value financial transaction, voice security would be neither practical nor cost-effective in the nightclub scenario.

“Voice biometrics is absolutely feasible,” says David Troy, a sales and communications executive at outbound IVR provider CallFire, “but that type of speech is not readily available for everyone right now.”

And even if it were available, companies employing the technology would still require their customers to enroll—that is, to record a voiceprint in advance of the first outbound IVR phone call—and that’s not easy to do. “It would be really annoying for people, unless they really want or need the information,” says Judith Markowitz, president of J. Markowitz Consultants and a leading expert in voice biometrics. “You’re really trading convenience and user-friendliness for security. It’s a big issue, and there has to be a balance between what your customers are willing to do and what you need to put them through.”

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