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.

‘Tis the season for fraud, which means that criminals are increasing their efforts to take advantage of cardholders, retailers, and consumers through scams such as account take-overs, probing activity, and phone spoofing. Retailers are one and a half times more vulnerable to consumer chargeback between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Chargebacks act as a form of consumer protection to offer remedy to individuals who have experienced identity theft, merchant errors or unethical business practices. Retailers can minimize the risk of chargebacks by implementing the correct fraud prevention methods before chargebacks hit.

Three out of four consumers have changed their behavior due to the threat of cyber crime. Fraudsters will fear-monger by any means necessary: pop-up alerts, loud threats, and deceitful warnings. They will do anything to trick an alarmed user into falling for the con. Whether you are a business, government agency, enterprise, or financial service, you are all at risk.

While there are a lot of eyes and ears on cyber security, whose watching out for the contact centers? Recently, an owner of a local café in New London, Connecticut was a victim of phone fraud. The owner got a call from a man purportedly from his utility company threatening to shut off the restaurant's power if he didn't pay a past-due bill within 45 minutes.