Banks using voice recognition software on customers!!

BANKS USING VOICE RECOGNITION SOFTWARE ON CUSTOMERS!!

this is a partial copy of the e-mail i received a few days after i had called my branch for a simple account question-

"Bank of America would like to thank you for the phone call that you, or someone in your household, made on February 10, 2009. The voice of the customer is very important to Bank of America as it continually monitors and improves its customer service.

You can provide your feedback on Bank of America’s customer service performance by completing a brief 5 minute survey.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Mod Edit: All Caps – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 13-2-2009 by GAOTU789]

Ok obviously i cut out the information about my account and my passwords. I would like to hear what fellow ATS viewers think. I think this is an outrage and will not be banking with them anymore. I urge anyone to banks with Bank of America to call their branch and voice their concern. Just to get people thinking, the voice recognition software would id you, and i don't know of any safeguards on this information, but i dont think its a stretch to see them sharing this with credit collection agencies and potentially anyone.

i will follow this and see what i can dig up but i wanted to post this as quickly as possible so i appoligize for the lack of supporting links.


(visit the link for the full news article)

Hey Paradox,

Did you call them back using the same telephone number? It might just be that your telephone number was recognized, and an automatic message was triggered to keep the customer service workload down.

It happens to me with Taxis - If I order a taxi here, and then call back while I'm waiting, I get: "Thank you for calling Panther, your driver will arrive shortly in a blue Audi..." etc etc.

Having said that. if there's anyone to be the first to apply this tech outside of the military, it's likely to be banks!

[edit on 13-2-2009 by obscureuser]

reply to post by paradox headache


The part where it says "your voice is important to us" probably doesn't mean what you think it does. I think they mean your opinion...Which we all know is NOT important to them.

Originally posted by obscureuser
Hey Paradox,

Did you call them back using the same telephone number? It might just be that your telephone number was recognized, and an automatic message was triggered to keep the customer service workload down.

It happens to me with Taxis - If I order a taxi here, and then call back while I'm waiting, I get: "Thank you for calling Panther, your driver will arrive shortly in a blue Audi..." etc etc.

Having said that. if there's anyone to be the first to apply this tech outside of the military, it's likely to be banks!

[edit on 13-2-2009 by obscureuser]

I agree. The OPs quote said 'you orr someone from your household'. This leads me to believe that it was tracked through the phone number. Your phone number is not blocked when you call financial institutions and the like using anonymous calliing or having an unpublished number.

To be technical about it, any voice response system, where you speak commands, instead of entering a numbere, is a voice reckognition system. Thus the potential is there to track voice prints.


[edit on 13-2-2009 by mantic]

i called them back and got ahold of someone, they said that they want the customers voice to be recognized so their account information can be easily accessed and my service can be improved, it is also something new that they are doing. it may just be something that is insignificant but i really dont know why they need any more info than my social security number, name, address, phone#, account number. this just seems like one more step for them to make sure they will always get what you "owe" them.