Cloud Contact Center Featured Article

Voice Biometrics Can Mitigate Security Risks, Contact Center Fraud

By Michelle Amodio
TMCnet Contributor

Despite technological investments, contact center fraud is still a concern, particularly for contact centers whose business is in finance or other industries that deal with sensitive information.

A common practice for fraudsters is to gather information online about a particular user through phishing emails, as well as through social networking sites, in preparation for a call center scam. Essentially, they farm information about an individual and then call the contact center and use all that information to attempt to pass the authentication challenges, as well as to manipulate the call center agents. Typically, individual bank accounts are targeted.

According to Infinity Research, the annual cost of fraud is expected reach $6.3 billion dollars in 2015, and that’s just for the banking and financial sector.

Fraudsters are aware that call center agents are trained to solve customers’ problems in the shortest amount of time, and they use scripts to help them say just the right things to persuade agents to grant them access. Given this and the staggering statistics, how can contact centers levy technology to mitigate data breaches and other security risks?

In addition to other safeguarding measures, there’s also voice biometrics. Integrating voice biometrics means that call centers can analyze voice characteristics, such as dialect, speaking style and pitch. By collecting and archiving voice characteristics of customers, call centers can authenticate customers' identities when they call in.

Layered security is the key to avoiding an otherwise messy mistake. By having contact center agents ask more pertinent questions instead of just “strong” security questions alone, in addition to using a voice biometric solution, it’s that much easier to prevent stolen identities or releasing sensitive information to the wrong person.

Voice biometrics can also save time and money by offering the best possible experience a customer can have with a contact center: never having to call one to begin with. In this scenario, a reduction in calls to a call center means more cost-effective operations. It also means less calls for complaints. For example, Barclay’s has seen customer complaints drop by 60 percent just by implementing voice biometrics. For call centers focused on improving the customer experience while being more cost-effective, this technology is a natural choice to consider.

With call monitoring and recording methods, in addition to newer, more updated technologies like voice biometrics, businesses can take an active part in their own risk reduction. Voice and data gathering can protect against fraud, resolve legal disputes, provide accuracy of verbal communications and monitor threatening calls.