Journey.Ai’s Face, Voice Biometrics Help to Attract Strategic Investment From Avaya

Call center solutions specialist Avaya is banking on biometric tech, announcing that it has made a strategic investment in Journey.Ai, Inc.

Already part of the Avaya DevConnect partner ecosystem, Journey offers a customer identification platform that includes support for face and voice recognition. The startup was co-founded in 2016 by a former Avaya executive – Brett Shockley, who served in multiple senior positions with the latter between 2008 and 2014, and who remains the CEO of Journey. Mr. Shockley’s son, Alex Shockley, serves as Journey’s President.

Avaya, for its part, is no stranger to biometrics and other innovative technologies. The company announced that its platform would support face and voice biometrics as far back as 2018, and also offered a Software Development Kit that enabled conversational interaction with AI assistants and a feature designed to assess end user sentiment.

That having been said, Avaya’s leadership are evidently impressed by Journey’s own technology. In a statement announcing the strategic investment, Avaya asserted that Journey’s solution “can confirm customer identity with 99.9999% accuracy in less than two seconds,” adding that its Zero Knowledge Network solutions “gives Avaya OneCloud CCaaS customers the unique ability to digitally request information from their customers, from Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to payments to electronic signatures.”

The latter solution sends that information to “back-office systems” for verification, without the need to share it with contact center agents, who receive only the information they need to help the customer. The solution thus helps to protect end user data and privacy.

“Journey’s innovation in Zero Knowledge, coupled with core Avaya Contact Center offerings address critical components of the customer experience along with the privacy and security requirements faced by contact centers,” explained Avaya Corporate Development GVP David Austin. “This strategic investment in an ecosystem partner enhances key security capabilities for our global customers, and is bringing additional industry-leading innovation into the Avaya OneCloud platform.”

Avaya’s investment reflects ongoing interest in voice biometrics technology as a call center solution, as well as the increasing use of facial recognition for remote customer verification.

The companies did not disclose the amount of Avaya’s investment, but acknowledged that it is not expected to have a material impact on Avaya’s current fiscal quarter.

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August 31, 2021 – by Alex Perala