West Partners with PerSay
Yesterday, West Interactive announced a partnership with Israeli voice security solutions provider PerSay to incorporate hosted voice biometrics into its outsourced communications solutions.
PerSay already has strong representation in North America with its contract with BellCanada, which uses its platform to service millions of customers, but the West partnership represents a new foothold in the U.S. market.
“Basically, for us, it is another achievement in a long way to build and dominate the voice biometrics market,” says PerSay CEO Almog Aley-Raz. “We’ve been operating and focusing on this area for the last eight years….One of our targets is to establish the company in the U.S.…We actually relocated our executive vice president for global sales and business to New York.”
Aley-Raz feels the company was selected over its competitors for three main reasons: 1.) its platform’s bottom-line accuracy, which PerSay is eager to demonstrate; 2.) the platform’s ease of deployment (Aley-Raz asserts the platform has “everything you need for large-scale deployment,” like multisite support, high availability and scalability, and embedded security); and 3.) its impressive list of customers, which includes BellCanada, British Telecom, and China Merchant Bank.
PerSay says that its biometric capabilities will enhance West’s services. With its core technology originally rooted in the defense industry, PerSay’s VocalPassword platform is touted to be language and accent independent, as well as capable of being seamlessly integrated into an enterprise’s existing VoiceXML platform. The technology identifies a speaker’s identity in real time using a spoken passphrase and comparing it to a stored digital voice model or voiceprint. It distinguishes between distinct characteristics like speaking patterns in real time to make its matches.
Because of this, the platform is thought to be minimally invasive for users, smoothing along secure transactions and interactions at call centers. The technology could help keep calls shorter and less aggravating. Users would only need to remember a short passphrase rather than a long string of indentifying numbers that could be compromised if obtained surreptitiously.
Citing these concerns, Pam Mortenson, president of West Interactive, says, "With the increasing risk of identity theft, our customers are looking for innovative ways to ensure security while not negatively impacting the caller's experience."
She adds, "West is dedicated to offering services that help our customers simplify and accelerate the transactions of daily life. PerSay's technology will help us deliver on that promise."
In addition to these customer relations benefits, PerSay contends that its technology will help cut costs for West through increased automation—cuts that could lead to greater savings for its clients and, perhaps even end users.