Angel offers voice identification solution for the health care industry

Published 17 August 2010

With its Customer Experience Platform, Angel aims to authenticate phone conversations for doctors, patients, and pharmaceutical sales reps using voice biometrics; the software-as-a-service technology is used by pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, companies in the financial industry such as Bank of America

Angel, a provider of on-demand, cloud-based customer-engagement services, introduced its Angel 4 Customer Experience Platform for call centers. The technology features unified multichannel/multimodal communication options such as SMS (Short Message Service), chat, e-mail, voice biometrics, and mobile management.

eWEEK reports that the SAAS (software-as-a-service) platform enables organizations quickly to deploy enterprise-level telephony applications. Health care providers can access the IVR (interactive voice response) service in the cloud via smartphone.

According to Angel, the service is on-demand, so companies will not have to purchase hardware or software, or invest in staffing to operate it. The cloud setup will also save customers time in automating the multichannel communications, the company said.

To use the service, doctors can dial in and order a biometric voice print, Dave Toliver, director of marketing, told eWEEK. Once their voices are authenticated, they can order drug samples without having to talk to a live agent. “It authenticates them in a secure way and creates a legally binding signature for the entire process,” Toliver said.

The cloud-based platform is part of Angel’s Caller First initiative to improve the caller experience. According to Toliver, when new customers call in, sales reps will be able to take doctor or patient information in an automated fashion, so going to the doctor’s office to take orders will no longer be necessary.

In addition, the voice-response system will allow doctors to monitor patients more closely. Patients will be able to call in vital data such as glucose numbers at designated times to be retrieved by a physician, Don Keane, vice president of marketing, told eWEEK.

Patients can also receive alerts via e-mail or SMS. The company plans to introduce an iPad version in about six months, Keane said.

Angel launched the Customer Experience Platform 2 August at the SpeechTek conference in New York City.