Centrelink boosts self-service with voice biometrics

A  voice-only system developed by QUT and the Nuance text-dependent voice recognition system were integrated by Kaz using a technique called Linear Discriminant Analysis to combine the results, Summerfield said.

The integration has a "serendipitous' side effect for Centrelink - it now has a vendor-neutral system in place in which upgrades and new systems can be slotted in with relative ease.

On a typical voice biometrics system, Summerfield said, around one per cent of customers cannot authenticate. But he said it is too early to give any statistics on how accurate Centrelink's biometrics system is.

In any case, a customer that fails to enrol  (whose voice cannot be accurately recorded and verified) will be "immediately thrown out to a human operator for assistance," Summerfield said.

Centrelink will not abandon its PIN and password authentication, as many customers are likely to still prefer it over voice biometrics, he said.

"The groups we are targeting specifically are high volume callers -those that contact us for regular, non-complex inquiries. The more of these customer inquiries that we automate, the more our customer service advisors can focus on complex interactions."

The new system is unavailable for a few short hours on weeknights to ensure its operation does not impact Centrelink's back-up window, Summerfield said.

"From a point of view of doing transactions, that isn't so safe [to run both concurrently]," he said.

More self-service options

Centrelink was allocated an additional $120 million in the latest Federal Budget to boost customer support resources in its call centres in the anticipation of increased unemployment, and a further $5.7 million for 'online service delivery' technologies.

Centrelink said it will use the $5.7 million to "enhance access to our online services by allowing more customers to use online services at the same time, and continuing to increase the reliability and speed of our online applications."

Some of the funding may be allocated to a production version of Nuance's "speakfreely" speech recognition software, which the agency is currently trialling among internal staff before considering a production roll-out.

Using the 'speak freely' self-service engine, Centrelink users are asked by the system upon dialling in to describe in their own words what services they wish to access, before being automatically distributed to the appropriate resource.

Centrelink is trialling the software by using it to handle inquiries made to the agency's IT help desk.