Amazon Connect Voice ID launches

Matt Smallman Avatar Matt Smallman
9 min read
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Amazon recently started a preview of their own Voice BiometricsVoice Biometrics uses the unique properties of a speakers voice to confirm their identity (authentication) or identify them from a group of known speakers (identification). authenticationAuthentication is the call centre security process step in which a user's identity is confirmed. We check they are who they claim to be. It requires the use of one or more authentication factors. technology, Voice ID, for their Amazon Connect contact center platform. The initial product is on paper, more than good enough for a wide range of use cases so is sure to be disruptive for end-user organisations, contact centre platform and voice biometric technology. This is a move we long predicted but didn’t think would come so soon or be as disruptive.

Overview

Voice ID is based on text-independent Voice Biometrics so doesn’t require the caller to say anything specific but does require an extended conversation to enrol and authenticate. The integration pattern is consistent with most products in the market, but the execution is a lot slicker due to Amazon’s control of the underlying platform. Using Amazon’s graphical editor, only a few blocks need dropping in a contact flow (used in Amazon Connect to handle both IVR and Agent interactions). Amazon’s Contact Centre Control Panel (the default agent control panel) has been updated to enable enrolmentEnrolment is a step in the registration process where specific utterances are requested from the user or previously acquired audio is used to create a Voice Biometric template (Voiceprint) for subsequent use in Authentication/Identification. and authentication through a set of simple API calls. It’s not clear from the write-up whether audio sessions are preserved when they move between IVR and Agent, but the results of an IVR session can be retrieved, and additional authentication started if required but. Amazon has provided a good, write-up of how to use it here.

The authentication status block from Amazon Connect Voice ID
The authentication status block from Amazon Connect Voice ID

How does it compare — Key Features

We haven’t got our hands on the service yet so are dependent on Amazon’s documentation for this information. As soon as we get access, we will post a full review and update this article.

Analysis

End Users

We have no reason to believe that given the huge amounts of audio, compute power and talent Amazon has access to, the underlying biometric performance will be out of line with its peers. Based on this assumption, we are confident that Amazon’s offering will be more than good enough for many small and medium-sized organisations considering Voice BiometricsVoice Biometrics uses the unique properties of a speakers voice to confirm their identity (authentication) or identify them from a group of known speakers (identification). as an authentication method. The ease of implementation alone will be enough to encourage many organisations to give it a go. We are excited to see what value can be unlocked in industry sectors that have not traditionally embraced this technology.

Whilst Voice Biometrics has been on many contact centre managers' wish list for years, the barriers to getting started have been significant, and the available technology's reputation has not always been great. This move will reframe the internal debate for many organisations, and we expect many to now be thinking about when to implement not if. It was interesting that Amazon chose a health service provider as their initial case study as we expect that to be a particular growth area.

Whilst the technology may be good enough, and there may now be a greater incentive to act there remains a big gap between technical implementation and business success that will require organisations to apply learning and experience from existing deployments to implement a successful service. 

There will also be various organisations, particularly those with high value at risk transactions, regulatory requirements or significant scale, where Amazon’s technology will not be good enough. These can, however, still take advantage of the platform to learn about the technology and their own requirements better through prototyping. We fully expect to use Amazon Connect Voice ID as a rapid prototyping solution during client engagements. This approach and positioning are consistent with speech recognition services from Amazon, Google and others that are good enough for many but still leave a lot of value on the table for more optimised solutions at large scale.

Contact Centre Platform Providers

For other platform providers, Amazon has added another feature that they will be required to implement if only to retain feature parity in enterprise buyers' eyes. Not many providers will be able to compete with Amazon’s internal expertise in this area, so we are likely to see an acceleration of partnerships between existing Voice Biometric technology providers and platforms. To truly compete with Amazon, deep integration with platforms is required, and it remains to be seen which platforms will make this investment of time and effort versus those that deliver marketing gloss. For those who embrace it, the real value is probably increasing platform stickiness rather than recurring revenue. However, to really realise this value, platform providers and their partners will need to expand their services beyond the technology itself to encompass the business processes and behavioural changes required for end-user organisations to implement successfully. It’s unlikely that any platform will want any more than one provider so winners and losers will soon be known.

Technology Providers

As a result of sharing the margin on already low pricing, it’s unlikely that any of these partnerships will be a huge source of short-term revenue for technology vendors. The real value will be the obvious upsell provider when the integrated solution is not good enough. 

We see a clear market hierarchy emerging as follows:

  • Good — Services tightly integrated with and sold through contact centre platform or as software as a service. Minimal levels of customisation and configuration. Commoditised pricing based on transaction volumes. 
  • Better — Standardised integrations with most major contact centre platforms, including on-premise options and call recording applications. An extension of the existing app store model. Greater customisation including presentation attack detection and optimisation of biometric algorithms for end-user organisations. Limited counter-fraud capabilities. Higher transactional pricing and additional professional services implementation and support requirements.
  • Best — Integrated anywhere you want it as long as you are prepared to pay. Highly customisable. Extensive counter-fraud capabilities. The highest performing biometric algorithms and extensive optimisation support. Higher price, including non-transactional models with ongoing professional service support requirements. 

It will be fascinating to watch as market participants figure out where they really want to compete in the future and focus on real differentiation areas. The major market participants were included in the 2020 Intelligent Authentication and Fraud Prevention Intelliview that we publish jointly with Opus Research. We’re really looking forward to starting the fieldwork for the 2021 version in light of this shakeup.

Next Steps

This really is a disruptive move by Amazon, and we can’t wait to see how it plays out over the next few months and years. As soon as we have access to the service, we will post a fuller review so please subscribe to our email list to get notified when it’s available.

If you are interested in implementing Amazon’s Voice ID service and want to understand the practical implications for your business, then you should get in touch or take a look at our implementation checklist.