Australian Taxation Office deploys Nuance voice biometrics

The ATO receives approximately nine million calls per year from the community, with around 75% of these calls requiring an ATO agent to verify the caller’s identity. In addition, the ATO expects to receive more than half (4.3) million of these calls within its three-month peak tax period between July and October 2015.

Prior to voice biometrics, when a customer called to conduct a transaction with the ATO, the authentication process involved several steps, putting pressure not only on customers to provide personal details or have the correct documentation in front of them, but also on the ATO’s call center agents, who collectively spent approximately 75,000 hours each year just trying to verify customers over the phone.

To solve this, the ATO chose to deploy Nuance’s voice biometrics solutions, in partnership with Optus, an existing managed network services provider, and Nuance. The ATO completed its first installation of Nuance’s VocalPassword solution in September 2014, whereby customers speak a simple passphrase to verify their account. In April 2015, the ATO completed its second phase of deployment, the implementation of Nuance’s FreeSpeech solution, a first of its kind deployment in Australia that verifies customers during inbound and outbound calls without intrusive questioning, providing a seamless experience for customers. Combined, the new VocalPassword and FreeSpeech voice biometrics solutions provide an added layer of security for ATO customers, helping to prevent and detect identity theft.

Nuance Communications is a provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world.