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Company: Nuance Communications, Burlington, MA
Company Description: Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovation in Customer Service - Financial Services Industries

Nomination Title: Barclays and Nuance Voice Biometrics

Tell the story about your organization's innovations in customer service since the beginning of July 2012 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

In November 2012, Barclays’ Wealth & Investment Management deployed Nuance FreeSpeech™ Voice Biometrics solution in the call center to instantly and transparently authenticate callers during real time interaction over the phone.

Barclays has over 140,000 employees globally and operates in over 100 countries; the Wealth & Investment Management Division is one of the largest in the UK and in the top 12 globally. Barclays was interested in shortening the average call handle time and enhancing customer service through automating the identification and verification process used in its contact centers.

Barclays was the first financial services firm to deploy passive voice biometrics to automatically verify customers through natural conversation. Barclays realized that the previous authentication model was intrusive and not consistent with the target client experience. This time-consuming line of questioning lead to even more frustration when customers couldn’t remember answers to obscure security questions or were denied access to their accounts for authentication failure.

To solve this, Barclays, through a partnership with Nuance, deployed the secure voice biometrics technology to verify clients’ identities in the background, allowing agents to engage in 20-30 seconds of natural and personalized conversation with clients. This easy and seamless experience eliminated the need for passwords, PINs, and security questions.

With the new FreeSpeech™ voice biometrics technology, Barclays was able to reduce call time by 5% to improve the customer experience. Barclays enrolled 84% of its frequent callers in less than five months with 95% of those customers successfully verified upon their first use of the system. Additionally, customer feedback with the contact center experience has improved, with 93% of customers rating Barclays at least 9 of 10 for the speed, ease of use, and security of the new authentication system.

Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Robert Weideman
Executive Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Division

Robert Weideman is the executive vice president and general manager of the Nuance Enterprise Division, responsible for customer self-service solutions that are used by leading organizations around the world to automate and optimize the customer care experience – from the call center to the the web and mobile devices. In his tenure with Nuance he has been the general manager for Dragon and Imaging products and SVP of international marketing in EMEA. Previously he has been chief marketing officer for ScanSoft from 2001 until 2004, and vice president of marketing for the Adobe Systems' portfolio company Cardiff Software from 1999-2001, performing an instrumental role in establishing the W3C XForms XML standard.