Nationwide talks up speech technology

[QQ]Nationwide Building Society is one of the UK's first financial institutions to evaluate speech verification software to give customers access to accounts, writes Gavin Clarke.[QQ] Preliminary tests will establish whether the software is resilient enough to handle the 17,000 calls a day made to Nationwide's three call centres.[QQ] Speech verification software confirms the identify of a caller as genuine by the sound of their voice. It is a form of biometric software.[QQ] Nationwide has a history of pioneering biometrics, and has evaluated retina scanning on cash machines.[QQ] Mike Rehberger, Nationwide's head of business futures, said there could be a pilot this summer if Nationwide was satisfied with the software's robustness and accuracy.[QQ] Speech verification software could be an alternative to PIN numbers and code words, which customers use to prove their identity to call-centre agents, he said. The software, from Vocalis, would sit on the call-centre server and be incorporated into the bank's existing applications.[QQ] Vocalis chief scientist Trevor Thomas said the software recognised the way an individual pronounced vowels and certain words.[QQ] However, he said 0.7% of calls could fail to be recognised. Nationwide could back up the system by switching a customer to a call-centre agent, he said.