There are also other less obvious, yet equally important, costs to broken call center authentication processes. They include:

Operational costs. Effectively verifying a caller's identity takes time, even when using flawed protocols. Call time, as any customer service stakeholder knows, has a direct impact on the bottom line. Moreover, fraudsters make five calls for every transaction – five times more than a legitimate customer would for the same transaction. And effective social engineering takes time, too. All this dramatically impacts call center overhead.
Regulatory liability. The burden of fraud prevention falls squarely on the shoulders of service providers and regulators do not take kindly to violations of privacy regulations. Fines and sanctions are common and can be steep, and even criminal charges are not unheard of.
Brand and reputational damage. Call center fraud is effectively a data breach, and the public and media (not to mention social media) are harsh judges of such violations. Service-intensive industries like finance, healthcare and insurance are especially vulnerable to measurable brand equity damage from these incidents.
Customer experience. As awareness of the threat of fraud grows, many call centers adopt more stringent and time-consuming authentication procedures. This not only raises the average cost of resolution, but also dramatically degrades the overall call center customer experience, with frustratingly-long wait times and noticeable agent irritability.

Finding a Resolution

The ubiquity of smartphones can facilitate a sea change in call center security. Unfortunately, most call centers are not yet making full use of common smartphone feature sets. Without radical business process adaptations or even massive investments in technology, call centers can still effectively and safely authenticate their callers. Here's how:

Automate authentication. There are numerous methods by which callers can authenticate themselves prior to reaching an agent. Companies can employ centralized solutions such as voice biometrics to screen callers. Or they can authenticate using solutions that rely on typing in a username and password, pattern authentication, or even fingerprint and face recognition. All this takes place before live agent interaction – eliminating the possibility of social engineering and lowering the burden on agents.
Use in-call authentication. For call centers that prefer live agent authentication, smart agent-caller collaboration tools give callers the ability to use the camera on their smartphone to authenticate via selfie and photo ID – just like they would do in a real branch. Service providers can make this type of authentication mandatory – and any customer who opts out would be required to sign a waiver acknowledging that his or her private data may be at risk.

As the customer service industry continues to experience unprecedented technological development, the ongoing success of a company will be determined by its ability to address developing challenges with new technology available. Authentication breaches have been a long held challenge to call center operators, with potentially detrimental implications when inadequately addressed. Isn't it time the industry knocked this issue out?

Instant Insights /

Curbing Contact Center Authentication Breaches

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