Fraud Prevention in Contact Centres

Dan Miller, on behalf of NICE, outlines the technological solutions that have helped detect fraudsters during the pandemic.

One of the lasting impacts of COVID-19-related “lockdowns” is a fundamental change in the role of contact centres that emphasizes the need for both speedy authentication and stronger methods to combat fraud.

At first, there was a rush of activity to cancel travel plans, negotiate new payment terms, investigate home WiFi and streamed entertainment options and other topics that were both complex and personal in nature.

Hold times were long; emotions high; agents stressed; exposure to fraud based on “human engineering” acute.

The opening spike is over. The second wave brings a different mix of topics as individuals use the phone to support their new home-centric lifestyles. Personal financial issues are a constant.

Now they are accompanied by queries surrounding the status of an order or timing of a shipment, as well as growing instances of health-related activity ranging from testing sites, insurance coverage and remotely conducted doctor’s appointments.

Once again, the topics are highly personal and the need to establish a trusted link with a service provider is heightened by the fact that criminals have adjusted their plan of attack to the new reality as well.

Contact centre agents at cable companies, banks, airlines, hotel chains, medical groups and retailers join government agencies as targets for illegal access to personal data and account take-over.

The pandemic exposed new “attack surfaces” for criminals, but it also gave rise to the implementation of technological solutions that can detect fraudsters in the background, thwart their illegal intents and prevent them from carrying out fraud in the future.

Contact centre solution specialist NICE offers a Real-Time Authentication (RTA) suite of solutions that conform to Opus Research’s Intelligent Authentication (IAuth) checklist:

• Real time: Continuous vigilance enables companies to detect imposters in real time, 24 hours a day.
• Risk-aware: Recognizes the level of risk associated with a user as well as the actions of that user.
• Adaptive: Employs mechanisms that respond to the latest techniques in the perpetual cat-and-mouse game between companies and imposters.
• Multifactor: Promotes accuracy by employing any factor necessary to detect an imposter, including “something you know” (like a PIN or password), “something you have” (like a smartphone or dongle) and “something you are” (voice, face, fingerprint or behavioural biometrics).
• Multilayered: Involves “step-up procedures” or multiple factors and protocols to discourage false acceptance of imposters or false rejection of legitimate customers.
• Blacklist: Analyses inbound calls and their outcomes and identifies frequent callers who are known imposters.
• Deep integration: Combines caller authentication and fraud prevention contact centre, CRM, Analytics, and WFO resources to improve agent efficiency and customer satisfaction without sacrificing security.

Author: Robyn Coppell