Identity Reimagined at 106th IAI Conference

Fans of investigative TV shows may feel like they’re up on the latest technologies about forensic evidence and crime scene processing, but the real pros were at the International Association for Identification (IAI) Conference.

The 106th IAI Conference was held July 31 – August 6, 2022, at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska. As the world’s largest organized industry event, the conference featured cutting-edge forensics and biometric technology for law enforcement, state and local government and other agencies focused on public safety.

Transforming Public Safety and Security with Identification Technologies

We were honored to be a leading sponsor at the IAI Conference, including a booth that was front and center of the exhibition hall. Our theme, “Identity Reimagined,” spotlighted NEC’s Digital Platform and the latest advancements to revolutionize law enforcement investigations.

Knowing the law enforcement and biometric community wants hands-on demos, each section of our booth was highly interactive and educational, featuring:

  • Integrated Biometric Workstation (IBW) – Designed for ease of use, NEC’s IBW can be operated with a tablet, enabling forensic examiners to identify more offenders faster, for more efficient, effective crime solving.
  • SmartScan™ Station – A sleek, scalable, secure and easy to manage fingerprint, palm print, facial and iris livescan kiosk.
  • RapidHit – Simple, single sample real-time rapid DNA analyzer allows collection and processing of arrestee cheek swab or evidence sample in 90 minutes.
  • NeoFace® Reveal – Face recognition platform that reliably captures, enhances, organizes and matches video and graphic images to specific individuals.
  • Mobile WAY – A unified cloud platform for rapid search of federal, state and local law enforcement biometric database. The subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) model makes Mobile WAY cost-effective for any size agency.

Protecting the Public with Biometric Technology

With more than 1,000 biometric authentication systems in approximately 70 countries and regions around the world, NEC is a trusted partner that state and local government can rely on to help protect communities and ensure public safety.

In fact, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) matching algorithm recognition benchmarks have consistently proven that NEC’s biometric technologies have the fastest and most accurate face and fingerprint recognition algorithm. NIST also recognizes NEC with the most resilient facial recognition technologies for viewing low angles, low resolution images and poor image quality.

We were excited to share successes and best practices at the IAI Conference and look forward to next year’s event!

Discover more and schedule a demo or contact us directly.

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How Self-Service is Elevating Customer Experience

For decades, customer service and support operations have held an important role in the way organizations operated their businesses. However, this labor driven operation was looked upon as an expense—just a cost of doing business. Organizations often sought ways to lower customer service / support costs by moving this function offshore or outsourcing, limiting ways customers could communicate with them and thus reducing contact center budgets or deploying technology to deflect and/or eliminate in some cases, the “human” contact.

The attitude that customer service / support is an expense began to change as companies put more focus on the actual customer experience and realized that there were opportunities being overlooked. According to research by Deloitte Digital, customer service interactions—especially those with human interaction—are the ones that were “most likely to build or break customer trust and loyalty.”1

BizReport recently reported that customer service and customer experience are now closely linked, which affects the way consumers regard a company brand. Among the findings reported, 73% of consumers want the ability to solve product and service issues on their own. For millennials, customer service expectations have increased since 2012 with 56% indicating that they’ll switch brands if they experience poor customer service.2

Benefits of Self Service

A trend toward self-service by consumers has also emerged and likely will continue to rise. More and more consumers purchase products online and experience delivery methods such as curbside pickup and at-home deliveries. These “touchless” ways of shopping often result in customers increasingly reaching out to businesses through email or phone with questions and requests for assistance. Providing additional options for self-service can improve the customer experience and cut down on frustration, long wait times and inability to reach a business after hours.

Looking a little deeper, it’s apparent that consumers increasingly want to troubleshoot problems on their own rather than waiting to interact with companies online or by phone. Often companies will become too preoccupied in handling common questions from consumers—What are your business hours? When is my next appointment? Did my direct deposit process? How do I drive to your location? — which can negatively impact customer service overall.

To jumpstart self-service options, businesses can provide access to information via intuitive website design and automation, knowledge bases, Interactive Virtual Agent (IVA) chatbots and back-office integrated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to their customers. For example, an IVR can be an option for handling common mundane inquiries. Doing so enables organizations to better manage their contact center agents’ time to more effectively manage incoming calls that directly affect the bottom line. Seamlessly resolving issues through the most-efficient channels equals a better customer experience, more customer loyalty and ultimately more revenue for the company.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, one of NEC’s customers was inundated with frequent calls related to common questions like those mentioned above. The company leveraged IVR to support customers who called after business hours, allowing them to press “2” and the company would text a link to their business hour webpage automatically. After implementing self-service, our customer deflected more than 800,000 calls.

A Solution for Customer Self-Service

NEC UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, back-end data sources, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate representative, with insights to that specific customer. When customers have straight-forward questions (checking an account balance or paying a bill), the IVR enables self-serve for customers without using up the time of a live agent. When a customer’s problem extends beyond the dynamic menu, the IVR system quickly leads the caller to the most relevant agent available.

When implemented and configured correctly, IVRs can help boost sales and reduce churn. IVRs can increase customer satisfaction by enabling customer interactions to be handled and routed quickly and efficiently and reported upon afterwards.

IVR gives customers options on how to be assisted and leads them to the right information or agent for more personalized service. It also provides access during off-hours to information such as account balances.

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE IVR makes configuration and deployment extremely simple, including adding prompts, such as:

  • Initial Greeting/Welcome
  • Language Preferences
  • Authentication
  • Tailored Self-Service Menu that offers informational prompts providing answers to common questions
  • Access to the customer’s own personal account data
  • Choices for accomplishing tasks such as making or canceling an appointment, placing an order, accessing their account or speaking to someone in customer service or a particular department

Easy IVR

ENGAGE has a user-friendly intuitive wizard to streamline the set-up, for common IVR needs. Referred to as Easy-IVR, companies can quickly configure and build a simple step-by-step customized IVR that drive business and improve customer experience. Now, in as little as five minutes, non-programmers can either build an IVR or enhance an existing one quickly and easily.

IVR Studio

ENGAGE offers a Development Studio for creating robust self-service / self-help and to integrate to external applications and data sources. Referred to as the IVR Studio, this component of the Admin Portal is leveraged by trained/certified users (partners and/or end user customers).

UNIVERGE BLUE ENGAGE is a cloud-based contact center solution that is fully equipped with Interactive Voice Response to improve the customer experience with seamless self-serve and customized service options.

Discover more and schedule a demo.

Sources:

  1. Elevating Customer Service: From Cost Center to Experience Hub,” Deloitte Digital
  2. Report: Poor customer service pushes consumers away,” BizReport

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Next-Generation Airport Tech Showcased at Passenger Terminal Expo 2022

As travel demand is unleashed, passengers expect smooth, safe and secure journeys.

During Passenger Terminal Expo (PTE) 2022, NEC partnered with SITA to showcase seamless, touchless airport experiences through the integration of SITA Smart Path and SITA Flex powered by the NEC I:Delight identity management platform. We were pleased to join more than 6,500 colleagues, in Paris, France. With “Bonjour” greetings, we shared innovations and insights for the future development of the world’s airports.

Making Touchpoints Touchless™
NEC’s partnership with SITA launched just as airports and airlines increasingly look to low-touch and automated passenger processing to comply with health requirements following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The majority of passengers (73%) are willing to share their biometric data to improve airport processes, according to the 2021 International Air Transport Association (IATA) Global Passenger Survey. That is up from 46% in 2019.

NEC I:Delight’s interoperable digital identity management together with SITA Smart Path and SITA Flex allows passengers to use their digital identity on their mobile phones whenever they travel.

See how NEC and SITA are taking travel to new heights.

PTE 2022 “We’re unlocking the potential of seamless next-generation passenger processing solutions with SITA to make mobile-enabled and touchless airport processes a reality,” said Jason Van Sice, NEC Vice President of Aviation. “NEC I:Delight allows travelers to ‘register once, use often,’ providing a consent-driven, personalized customer experience.”

On the expo floor, NEC and SITA spotlighted recent success stories featuring Star Alliance and Miami International Airport. The exhibit included demos of passengers using their biometric identity to check-in, make payments, drop their bags, as well as pass-through security, immigration and boarding by simply scanning their face at each step.

“We know from SITA’s Passenger IT Insights research that passengers are enthusiastic about self-service mobile and touchless technologies. Our global partnership with NEC offers this. Together we’re able to deliver secure walk-through travel at airports globally, integrating SITA Smart Path to validate a passenger’s identity from check-in to boarding, and offer a seamless passenger journey to the connected travelers” said Manuel Deloche, Vice President Passenger Processing at SITA.

The Future of Digital ID
With innovative identification technologies and AI solutions—including the most accurate face recognition algorithm according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) —NEC I:Delight allows passengers who have opted to use the service to be identified quickly. Even when passengers are on the move and wearing masks, the platform offers a high degree of accuracy.

SITA Smart Path and SITA Flex solutions can integrate NEC’s biometric technologies with existing, common-use infrastructure and airline applications while delivering a frictionless airport journey.

We are energized by the connections made at PTE and look forward to the future of travel in the months ahead. Discover more and schedule a demo or contact us directly.

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Streamline Future Federal Operations using a Digital Identity Management Platform

Today, utilizing the right technology solutions can support and elevate workforce performance to provide improved internal and public-facing customer service. As operations and responsibilities change and evolve, our solution architects, system engineers and laboratory scientists constantly work to develop solutions for federal agencies’ now, next and after-next operational requirements. NEC National Security Systems (NEC NSS) works in partnership with agencies to tailor solutions that can aggregate, expand and enhance systems capabilities into a multifunctional digital ecosystem designed to support current and future federal operations without undertaking massive and costly system overhauls.

NEC NSS remains the government’s visionary technology partner and is here to support agencies that face tight budgets, waning personnel resources, obsolete technologies and increasing performance demands.

The NEC Digital Platform (NDP) is a foundational solution designed to support federal agencies as they navigate digital identification and information ecosystems. The NDP streamlines the use of our no. 1 ranked secure biometrics, identity and document verification capabilities and speeds the assembly of complex or challenging processes utilizing the flexibility of NEC’s orchestration, core technology and infrastructure services. The NDP provides common services and an extensible framework to reuse prebuilt components that accelerate a solution’s operational capability to the product.

The scalable platform is based on microservices architecture and enables containerization of biometric and non-biometric system workloads in one place. To learn more about how NEC NSS NDP’s solutions and services can support your critical missions, download the whitepaper here or contact us today.

NEC NSS is the Right Partner for Your Agency’s Needs

NEC NSS continuously refines and improves our technologies, and for every project, we assign a team of accomplished subject-matter and technology experts who are committed to our customers’ success. Our people, our ongoing innovation, and our corporate stability—NEC’s 120+ years of continuous operation—affirm that federal agencies can trust NEC NSS to deliver a proven platform, superior solutions, and unwavering service tailored to their use cases and need.

With the NDP, we extend beyond our industry-leading multimodal biometrics capabilities to the provision of a digital ecosystem that provides the safe, secure exchange of authorized and verifiable information. NEC NSS serves federal agencies, agency employees, and the public with technologies that result in healthy environments, improved mission-critical support, and increased efficiencies with lower overall costs.

To learn more about NEC NSS, visit www.necnss.com, or fill out the form below.

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Stop Struggling With Global Connectivity

International call routing should be simple but it isn’t.

Take for instance a U.S. phone call to a call center in Delhi, India. Before reaching that destination, this call will bounce around … going through Tokyo, Singapore, then Bangalore before finally arriving in Delhi.

Not only is this costly and involves numerous disparate carriers but indirect routing leads to such issues as call latency and poor service quality. Then there are the compliance and regulatory challenges between and within countries to be concerned about. And this call hopping is common practice for international calls. Not ideal when looking to build or maintain a brand reputation or a global business.

Is there an alternative … yes there is!

Imagine achieving effortless international and multi-national connectivity. Where simple call paths and quality replace the complexity of complicated and costly global communications. Where a single contract and U.S.-based management ends the frustration and the inconsistency of internationally calling.

NETWORK CONNECTGlobal Orchestration – powered by NETWORK CONNECT – simplifies global telecommunications by delivering international U.S.-based calls directly to their destination anywhere in the world. No more contending with call hopping from one country to another, no assorted carriers, nor excessive costs or poor performance.

Instead Global Orchestration delivers:

  • Direct calling paths
  • Optimal call quality
  • Dramatic cost savings
  • One global bill
  • Managed compliance and regulations

All consolidated into one contract and a single support contact.

Its global connectivity made simple

Global Orchestration – powered by NETWORK CONNECT – is an innovative call routing solution. You work with just one provider – us – for your international carrier services and support as we consolidate over 375+ U.S. and global carriers into a single consumable provider-neutral service.

Call traffic becomes more direct, transparent and extremely dependable with five-nines reliability. Plus you can get started right away without the need to change any day-to-day operations and with little to no upfront costs.

  • M2M and AI algorithm-based call routing automatically directs calls to the best quality-of-service and most direct path
  • A single pane of glass management interface provides insight into your entire voice network with visibility down to the individual call regardless of where in the world

Take a closer look at what’s possible

Stop struggling

Let us show you how our global presence and our unmatched carrier diversity can transform your global reach and brand reputation.

Join us for a no-obligation lunch and learn demo and an assess of your current calling plan.