TRENDING: Call Centers Take Off The Gloves And Put On The Masks To Fight Payments Fraud

Call center service providers are increasingly automating their processes to speed up their payments acceptance, while reducing associated costs. Debt collection agencies, for one, increased their use of interactive voice response (IVR) by 8 percent over the last year.

However, as call centers are upping their use of automation technology, fraudsters are finding new ways to penetrate it. Just between 2015 and 2016, call center fraud reportedly caused companies to lose $0.58 per call, netting major losses as the number of fraudulent calls piled up.

And bad actors aren’t just becoming more sophisticated at breaching existing technologies — they’re also becoming better at manipulating human call center agents, too. The July Call Center Commerce Tracker charts how organizations are turning to new solutions to stop these bad actors in their tracks.

Around The Call Center Commerce World

Among the latest organizations to boast improved call center security is Česká spořitelna, the Czech Republic’s largest bank. Česká spořitelna recently announced it would become the first bank in the country to use customer voice authentication, an upgrade over previous reliance on passwords and security questions.

Meanwhile, call center security solutions provider Pindrop announced a new authentication measure as well. The company’s solution evaluates incoming calls to identify those coming from spoofed or high-risk numbers. The customer authentication occurs before the phone rings in the call center or the call connects to an IVR system.

Increased attention to IVR may be particularly important. In one recent instance, health insurance company Humana reported suspicious behavior on its IVR system, marked by high call-abandonment rates that occurred after callers provided customer identification information, but did not go on to speak with a live representative or continue further in the automated call system. The company suggested the behavior could have been attempts by fraudsters to use the system to confirm stolen pieces of personally identifying information.

Fighting Fraud Across Channels

Call centers have to turn attention to securely handling customer information when taking payments over the phone, through SMS or other channels that customers crave. However, Michael Kropidlowski of call center solutions provider Aspect Software says companies have a careful balancing act to maintain, to provide ever-more robust authentication procedures without introducing frictions that will turn off customers.

In this month’s feature story, Kropidlowski explains how such approaches as masking can help, and how call centers are working to scare off fraudsters without accidentally scaring off customers.

About The Tracker

The Call Center Commerce Tracker serves as a monthly framework for the space, providing coverage of the most recent call center commerce news and trends. The Tracker also includes a provider directory, highlighting the key players that comprise the call center ecosystem.