In April this year, Van Lanschot was the first financial institution in the European Union to launch a new method of customer verification using voice biometrics. Martijn Boevink, Client Services manager at the bank, sheds light on the choice for this technology.

Until recently, anyone who contacted Van Lanschot as a customer had to answer seven to eight verification questions. Because when questions become really substantive, the customer has to identify himself. Of course it saves (conversation) time if you can automate this process and it contributes to the convenience for the customer. Especially when they call more often, asking all those questions over and over again can be frustrating. In addition, verification questions are becoming increasingly easy to retrieve, for example through social engineering.

Choice is up to the customer

Van Lanschot does not use IVRs or voice routing; the customer simply has to get an employee on the phone as quickly as possible, says Boevink. “Incidentally, cost savings are not the most important goal; if employees spend an hour on the phone with a customer, it is especially important that the customer has experienced this as useful. At the beginning of the verification process, we offer the voting passport option. The customer can choose this himself, also later in the conversation or later in another conversation. So we don't run old conversation recordings through a machine so that everyone has a voting passport,” explains Boevink. “The choice of the customer is recorded, so that the option is not offered again in a subsequent conversation.”

Martin Boevink has been updating since 2005 Van Lanschot and has been manager of the Client Services department, the contact center of the asset manager, since the beginning of 2019. Boevink has a track record in customer contact: he has been involved in WFM and the omnichannel strategy, among other things. The contact center is active for all parts of the asset manager and more than 100.000 service calls are made per year. Van Lanschot Kempen is a listed financial institution, originating from trading activities that Cornelis van Lanschot started in 1737. In the late 90s, the family business went public. The company has made several acquisitions in recent years. The asset manager has more than 1.550 employees and has around 100 billion euros in assets under management.

Voting Passport

The option to turn off the voting passport will soon also be added to the personal online environment. “If the customer says yes, the agent starts the withdrawal process and goes through the full verification process. The beginning of the conversation that takes place afterwards is also part of the material for the voting passport. But the employee can also indicate at other times during the conversation that a recording will be started.”

“The reliability of this solution is of course very important to us. The software does not pay attention to specific words or the content, but to several physical characteristics of the customer's speech (sounds, tempo, etc.), which are recorded on a separate audio track. The success of a voting passport depends, among other things, on the quality of the audio: the more material and the better the quality, the better the score of the voting passport. The software uses a certain threshold at which the voting passport has been successfully created – the employee can also see the latter in the CRM system.”

85% of customers say 'yes'

Imitating voices, twisting voices, the software doesn't fall for that. Fooling the employee with recorded audio from someone else will also not work, says Boevink. And if the employee is still in doubt, there is the personal safety question. And finally: once a voting passport has been compiled, subsequent contacts are also used for measurements. “When you talk to us, we already measure whether you are 'you' – that makes it suitable for us to use it,” summarizes Boevink.

The software is now running within the contact center, but private bankers, relationship managers and the back office will soon also be using the voting passport. Boevink: “We see that 85% of customers say 'yes'. That is beyond expectation. So far, the people who say 'no' are mainly customers who have little contact with us by phone, or customers who still find it a bit scary.” From a legal point of view, approval from the regulators was not required to add voice verification to the range of customer verification options.

More than just a technology roadmap

Van Lanschot's strategy explicitly focuses on digitization: “advance through digitization and advanced data analytics”. In 2013, Evi van Lanschot was launched, an online investment coach (also for beginners) and now an independent unit with 21 employees. But in addition to other technology such as voice biometrics, the bank will also pay explicit attention to strengthening competencies in the field of hospitality. The bank will explicitly invest in this over the next four years. “We want to be the best in customer contact by 2024, also outside the banking sector. Innovation is one facet of that. We still have a lot of things in the pipeline, but I can't say much about that yet. We do already know that we want to investigate the usability of voice biometrics in virtual assistants such as Google Home.” (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

On June 22, Verint is organizing a webinar together with Van Lanschot in which the application of voice biometrics is discussed in more detail. Questions that will be discussed: how do you get from idea to realization? What are the considerations made and how do you implement voice biometrics? What are the results when it comes to customer satisfaction and cost savings? Click here for more information or to register directly.

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