Gradient Labs Delivers Human-Quality Financial Voice Support with Deepgram STT

• 300ms+ reduction in end-to-end transcription latency
• Human-level CSAT scores that match or exceed top-performing human agents
• High-confidence reliability that significantly reduces "Can you repeat that?" prompts
• Full regulatory compliance via SOC 2 alignment and European data residency

In financial services, "good enough" is a liability. Mishearing a single term - "car" vs. "card" - can change the meaning of a request and introduce significant risk. Historically, scaling quality support meant hiring massive teams of human agents to manage the 50% of support volume that still arrives via phone.

Gradient Labs was founded to solve this scaling paradox. Having launched a text-based agent in 2023, the team recognized that voice could not be an add-on. For financial institutions, phone calls often involve complex cases like fraud alerts, account locks, and identity verification. These are where care and sound judgment are non-negotiable.

Gradient Labs implemented a voice pipeline that brings together LiveKit, an ensemble of STT providers, an LLM-based reasoning engine, and TTS.

1. Parallel Transcription: Audio is streamed to multiple STT providers simultaneously.
2. The "Deepgram-First" Logic: Deepgram Nova-3 acts as the primary engine. When Deepgram returns a high-confidence score, Gradient Labs trusts the transcript immediately. This allows the system to skip slower providers, removing unnecessary latency.
3. Provisional Responses: To eliminate "dead air," a fast-streaming model generates a provisional transcript. This allows the AI agent to begin forming a response while the final, high-accuracy transcript is confirmed.
4. EU Data Sovereignty: By utilizing Deepgram’s EU hosting endpoints, Gradient Labs keeps processing local. This slashes network latency and ensures strict adherence to regional data residency expectations.

"Over the course of about a week after introducing Deepgram’s Nova‑3 model, the quality of the voice experience improved noticeably. Now, when it returns a high‑confidence score, we know we can trust the transcript without question." — Gradient Labs Engineering

The transition to Deepgram produced immediate qualitative and quantitative gains:

• 300ms+ Latency Reduction: By prioritizing Deepgram's results and moving to EU hosting, end-to-end latency dropped significantly, making conversations feel immediate and engaging.
• Human-Level Satisfaction: In many cases, Gradient Labs’ voice agents achieve CSAT scores that match or exceed the customer's best human agents.
• Enterprise-Grade Security: Deepgram’s SOC 2 compliance and Zero Data Retention policy provided the safety guardrails necessary for regulated financial data.
• Fewer Repeats: High transcription accuracy means the agent asks, "Can you say that again?" far less often, building caller trust.

"Just gave it a whirl, pretty neat. Worked much better than my previous experience with the AI voice models." — Feedback from a large, regulated financial institution

To see the Gradient Labs voice agent handle non-linear conversations, barge-ins, and a full card replacement flow in real time, watch the demo below:

Gradient Labs – AI Voice Agent Live Demo

Gradient Labs is now expanding its voice capabilities into two critical areas:

• In February 2026 , Gradient Labs launched Outbound Voice Automation: Moving beyond inbound support, the agent can proactively call customers to resolve issues or follow up on workflows.
  • You can see how the outbound agent handles a fraud impersonation case here.
  • The outbound voice agent uses Deepgram Nova-3 to keep the same speed and accuracy as their inbound agent.
• Complex Identity Workflows: To handle identity verification (spelling names, reading reference numbers), Gradient Labs will use Deepgram’s custom vocabulary hints to ensure 100% accuracy on non-standard financial terms and alphanumeric strings.

Gradient Labs and Deepgram are proving that in the world of finance, teams don't have to choose between the speed of AI and the precision of a human.