How to search voice recordings for compliance purposes

The value of voice data and how it can drive measurable business outcomes

Almost all (95%) C-level executives regard voice data as valuable or very valuable to their organization – and more than three-quarters (76%) believe a 'voice-first' strategy will be in place within five years. These are among the findings of a survey conducted for voice technology specialist and Speechmatics partner Red Box, which turns voice data sets into valuable business insights.

Voice is a critical data set because it holds much more value than any other means of communication. It conveys context, sentiment, intent, emotion and actions – providing real intelligence. However, it is recent advances in transcription, artificial intelligence and machine learning that make voice data accessible in volume, when previously it would only have been accessible by listening to individual recordings. This presents organizations with an opportunity to leverage a rich data set that can help drive true and measurable business outcomes.

How voice technology plays a key role in compliance management

Voice recording is commonplace, especially in highly regulated sectors such as banking and finance. These recordings must be monitored and retained for compliance purposes.

Since 2008, for example, global financial institutions have been fined more than $36 billion for non-compliance. And anti-money-laundering (AML), know your customer (KYC) and sanctions regulations led to approximately $10 billion in fines being issued in 2019. Businesses are constantly searching for new technologies to cost-effectively improve their compliance obligations which in turn will help reduce fines, protect their brands and ensure their business continues to deliver shareholder value.

Progressive organizations are now using voice technology to convert voice call recordings into text to improve compliance monitoring and effectively respond to discovery requests. By converting voice call data into text, companies can retain, manage, search, analyze and retrieve voice records effortlessly. This can significantly accelerate compliance investigation times – and therefore cost – and ultimately protect their brand.

Increase supervision activity by turning audio data into text to improve compliance

The rise in machine learning and artificial intelligence takes monitoring and compliance management to the next level. Organizations now have the flexibility to apply industry or channel-specific vocabulary to a voice technology system. Key terms can be captured and analyzed to understand context around the use of a word for potential violations, for example, mis-selling scenarios.

Unlike text, it is extremely challenging and time-consuming to extract useful information from audio recordings. Yet the areas within organizations that specialize in compliance are highly motivated to ensure they remain on the right side of the legislation to avoid huge fines and damaged reputations. Having the broadest visibility of the data that is generated in everyday voice calls is vital to ensure this.

By transforming audio data taken from calls into text data, voice technology provides the opportunity to locate and replay stored recordings, ranked by relevance and displayed as text summaries with search words highlighted automatically. Organizations can automatically evaluate and then categorize every customer interaction into groups that are relevant to specific compliance obligations. Key event risk indicators can be used across the entire data sources, for example, transactional, audio and electronic communications (aComms and eComms).

Conclusion: Voice technology automates monitoring and discovery over the vast number of call recordings for compliance purposes

The value of adopting and integrating speech-to-text technology is no longer a question of choice for financial institutions, banks and other organizations. Using voice technology for regulatory compliance is enabling supervision and monitoring at scale while delivering a better service and protecting the customer.

When it comes to mis-selling and criminal activity, ensuring you have a robust compliance framework that includes technology is vital to identifying and mitigating issues. Accurate analysis is only possible with the use of state-of-the-art voice technology to transcribe voice data into text – making it a key component of any organization's compliance management systems.

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