Fraud Prevention in the Contact Center

The recent data breach at Equifax probably got your attention. Now what can you do about it? Data breaches are not new to enterprises, governments, and individuals – but the impacts are getting further and deeper for all their victims. One way to attack the attackers is through stronger analytics and actions in your contact center. Here’s why it’s important to do so…

Fraudsters with their eyes on the prize of customers’ bank, credit card and other financial or monetary accounts are increasingly taking advantage of poor or inconsistent protection in contact center systems because it’s easier than penetrating tight security on networks, apps and mobile devices. By using the interactive voice response (IVR) system for data gathering, or by sweet-talking an agent into a lapse, the criminal may snag details needed to access and drain the account. That’s why contact centers need a holistic, multi-layered approach for authentication, fraud prevention, detection and remediation. Benjamin Franklin would agree – here's why...

We hear about fraud occurring in government programs all the time, right? So why was this month’s SNAP (food stamp) bust in Florida – aptly named Operation Stampede/Cash Hungry – so noteworthy?

With SNAP we generally see trafficking as the major fraud channel, where beneficiaries sell their own benefits to small-time crooked retailers and buyers for about 50 cents on the dollar. Generally, this is so they can support their families in other ways with the money, but sometimes it’s for nefarious reasons. Even so, SNAP fraud is touted at about 1.3% of all SNAP costs (there's some debate on that number), which is very minor when you consider the billions $ going into the program. Commercial enterprises face the same or more.

Fraud occurs every day and impacts the enterprise and the consumer. In fact, it’s so prevalent I can’t remember a time – certainly not in this decade – when fraud wasn’t a top-of-mind issue in our lives. But what happens when fraud impacts business on your watch, and you were certain you took every conceivable precaution to ensure it wouldn’t and couldn’t happen? There’s a missing link in fraud prevention, and it just may surprise you.

Since its inception in the 1950s, the contact center has been the cornerstone of company-customer relationships. It’s the keeper of personal customer information, the ambassador of the sales organization and a source of knowledge for marketing efforts. While many customers have a love-hate relationship with contact centers, it’s still the place they turn to when they have a problem. How the contact center responds will dictate whether that customer sticks around or becomes an ex-customer. Essentially, the customer's relationship with the contact center strongly influences the trust in the customer relationship.

"Someone is using my name and Social Security number to open credit card accounts. All the accounts are in collections. I had no idea this was happening until I applied for a mortgage. Because these 'bad' accounts showed up on my credit report, I didn't get the mortgage."

In part one of this adaptive fraud prevention blog series, we revealed that one in 360 (1/360) calls are fraudulent and an alarming 25% of those fraudulent calls lead to the successful compromise of accounts. We also noted that 70% of call center fraud is committed by repeat offenders, according to Gartner.

As consumers continue to ditch their landlines in favor of mobile phones and less expensive voice over IP (VOIP) connections, fraudsters are finding new ways to exploit telephony technology for maximum financial gain.