By: Tom Rimmer, Senior Executive at Speechmatics
Compliance is not without its complications – there is an ever-increasing burden of rules and regulations to adhere to, and businesses are continually having to adapt to the seemingly endless policy changes. Indeed, with the advent of GDPR in 2018 and the enormous number of fines handed out as a result (there were a total of €77 million in 2020 alone), there has never been a more important time to be compliant with regulations and stay up to date with any changes to them. Consequently, it has never been more vital that any data businesses produce and hold is used securely and effectively.
In adapting to GDPR, KYC, AML and other similar policies, businesses need to ensure visibility of the data entering and leaving their organisations. This is no mean feat, as this can be incredibly difficult to judge, particularly if the data any given business is producing is unstructured or challenging to interpret. This issue is particularly pertinent when it comes to voice data – as a growing market, regulators and enterprises are having to react in real time to changes in order to comply and remain within the mutable laws.
Voice technology innovations, therefore, will play an increasingly important role in society as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With millions working from home – especially in businesses where interactions are held over the phone – there is an increased risk of compliance and regulatory issues. The SEC recently issued a Risk Alert to highlight the requirements around supervision/monitoring of traders whilst working out of the office.
As data is now one of the world’s most precious commodities, and using it securely is critical to the longevity of all businesses, turning unstructured voice data into actionable insights is essential and will continue to grow in prominence. The evidence for this is clear: contact centres have recently experienced major increases in call volume, with some banks reporting a massive 400% increase in calls in the early stages of lockdown. This proves that voice remains the preferred method for interactions in the financial sector and businesses need to have tools in place to deal with this effectively and at the necessary scale.
There is a two-fold benefit to analysing voice data: financial services firms have actionable insights to improve customer experience, but can also remain compliant towards a web of regulations. Among these some apply to voice data specifically – take for example FCA COBS 11.8 which explicitly requires banks to have a system in place to record interactions across the business, in order to be transparent should a compliance related issue present itself. Nothing illustrates the importance of this more than the mis-selling of PPI – many major financial institutions are still dealing with the fallout from it and over £38 billion has been paid back to customers to date. As a result, PPI has become the most complained about product as yet.
In Speechmatics’ recent partnership with Veritone, we have sought to help businesses achieve a comfortable level of compliance while improving customer experience by integrating our world leading speech recognition technology with Veritione’s aiWARETM operating system. The aiWARETM software utilises a diverse ecosystem of machine learning models to transform audio, video, text, and other data sources into actionable intelligence. By incorporating Speechmatics’ technology into this service, voice data can be analysed in real time or after an interaction has occurred: its neural networks consider acoustics, languages, dialects, multiple speakers, punctuation, capitalisation, context and implicit meanings. Businesses will reap the benefits of incorporating this kind of technology into their day-to-day processes.
In terms of the advantages – first, the integration will produce accessible and actionable data at scale, creating a real time impact on the bottom line of a business. Second, in decreasing operational costs, enterprises have the privilege of dedicating more time to ensuring customer satisfaction. Finally, voice technology permits businesses to have a more targeted approach to issues within their customer base: any glaring problems can be mitigated quickly before they snowball into incidents which may harm the financial or reputational position of an organisation.
Achieving effective and useful voice data analysis is the ‘final frontier’ in terms of businesses accomplishing a robust, 360 view of their data. Processes are streamlined through the automatic transcription of calls, allowing businesses to understand specific interactions and become aware of any areas of the business which are failing or require attention. Through achieving a holistic view of customers, businesses can, for example, become aware of a disgruntled customer without them explicitly saying so and thus act quickly to ensure they remain loyal to a given institution.
By automating risk management processes during this challenging time, businesses which experience high levels of interaction will be able to achieve effective governance of compliance issues and complete comprehensive due diligence across their entire workforce. The pandemic does not need to drag business processes down with it, and in an increasingly trying time for the economy, organisations which can push through without compromising their regulatory duties will likely thrive in the long term.
When it comes to wading through the quagmire of regulations, businesses are increasingly looking for solutions which will simultaneously permit them to remain compliant and streamline business processes. This is by no means a simple task, but by using technologies like automated voice analysis these headaches can be a thing of the past, or at the very least, produce actionable insights allowing the business to make the most of their data. By adopting tools which are specifically designed to attend to both these needs, businesses can breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to the enduring complications of regulatory compliance.
