Authentication sets the tone for inbound callers’ experiences with a contact center. Interrogate trustworthy customers before providing service, and you risk upsetting them. Mistakenly authenticate callers who are not rightful account holders, and you risk fraud and jeopardize the correct customers’ lifetime value.
How do you provide the experience consumers expect without exposing yourself to sophisticated fraudsters?
For the 75 percent of callers using mobile phones and residential cable and landlines, Neustar Inbound Authentication confirms that the calling phone is engaged in a call with the call center through a real-time deterministic inspection of the call and calling device. Callers using common vectors of call center fraud are never authenticated. Callers that pass inspection experience significantly fewer KBA questions and can be trusted with higher-value options within an IVR.
For another 20 percent of calls, a live inspection of the calling device is not possible. Instead, Neustar Inbound Authentication leverages results from its history of inspecting billions of calls and additional data about calls, carriers, and network routing from its role as a licensed telephone carrier. The results allow for the stratification of caller treatment by trust level.
A small percentage of calls (three to five percent) may be sent for closer scrutiny, along with many of the signals that drove their probabilistic risk assessment scores. Call outcome results, shared via a client feedback community, continuously improve detection rates and reduce false-positive rates over time.
If you can’t recognize your caller by the number, you can’t authenticate her. Customers often call from a number other than the one in their CRM record. Neustar Inbound Authentication instantly identifies unknown callers using the Neustar OneID® system, allowing you to match the consumer to your CRM and fill in incomplete records. When appropriate, containing more calls within the IVR not only improves the efficiency of your operations, but also frees live agents to interact with high-value or high-need consumers.
Neustar Inbound Authentication reduces fraud risk, improves customer experience, speeds call resolution, and reduces IVR-to-agent transfers.
The two familiar approaches to phone-based authentication—deterministic and probabilistic—each promise value but bring significant limitations.
Neustar Inbound Authentication delivers more frequent and reliable greens by adapting uniquely to the caller’s device, combining the coverage of probabilistic risk assessment with the accuracy of deterministic authentication. 95 percent of callers get streamlined service, more reasons to stay within the IVR, and faster resolution. The remaining callers get closer scrutiny to contain true positives for fraud—even on first-time attacks—and reduce future false positives.
Treating inbound callers as potential threats increases fraud-fighting costs and degrades customer experience and operational efficiency. With Neustar Inbound Authentication, route authenticated callers into a Trusted Caller Flow™ for quick problem solving and give an appropriate level of scrutiny for everyone else.2
| Typical Distribution | Caller Identification + Authentication | Next Steps | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 75% | Identified in CRM or by Neustar Inbound Authentication Authenticated, highest trust |
Route caller into the fastest flow with the most self-serve options | Reduce average handle time by 20 to 70 seconds Reduce IVR-to-agent transfers 10 percent Reduce phone fraud 10 percent3 |
| 20% | Identified in CRM or by Neustar Inbound Authentication Not authenticated, moderate trust |
Provide caller with a simple authentication challenge and faster service | Reduce average handle time by 10 to 30 seconds |
| 5%4 | Not identified Not authenticated, low trust |
Escalate authentication strategy or flag caller for fraud department | Reduce phone fraud 10 percent5 Reduce false positives 10 percent6 |
1. Neustar internal data
2. Source
3. The Total Economic Impact™ of Neustar Fraud and Authentication Solution. Forrester. 2020
4. Many non-authenticated callers are not fraudsters
5. Forrester
6. Forrester
Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ framework found that an investment in Neustar TRUSTID Fraud Solutions reduces average agent handle time by one minute, delivers an ROI of 144%, and pays for itself in three months.
Fraudsters love "standard” contact center authentication methods. Customers hate it. Instead, identify and authenticate callers before they hear “Hello,” and stop fraudsters from reaching your IVR and agents.
Your phone-based authentication solution could be authenticating callers who are not rightful account holders. Read why this happens and how to reduce fraud risk and false positives.
Call centers across the US are shifting their business operations and strategies in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Gain actionable insights from industry experts, including guest Art Schoeller, Principal Analyst, Forrester.
Key takeaways from a Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned by Neustar, which explores why firms that combine offline, online, and device-based identity-verification capabilities see differentiated success.
Is authentication a concern for your inbound call center? Learn how forward-thinking call center leaders use inbound caller authentication to improve fraud detection, enhance customer experience, and reduce operating costs.
Learn How Your Company Can Benefit from the Power of Trusted Connections.
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