This article was written by Matthew Addison, Chief Revenue Officer at Smartnumbers, a Genesys AppFoundry Partner.
The contact center is the epicenter for customer experience — and a prime target for fraudsters. Contact center leaders must know what security concerns are lurking and how best to defend against threats while enhancing the customer experience. The insights in this blog are derived from analyzing hundreds of millions of phone calls to our customers’ contact centers.
Unseen Dangers: Fraudsters and the Phone Channel
Fraudsters are using the phone channel more than you might realize. Our data reveals that as many as 1 in 500 calls that come into your contact center and call center could be from fraudsters.
On average, these fraudsters make 26 calls before executing an attack. While not every call culminates in a direct scam, collectively these calls help fraudsters decipher your defensive strategies and security protocols.
Yet, every call also presents a potential opportunity for you to thwart malicious intentions.
Fraudsters use the telephony channel for a couple critical tasks:
Reconnaissance: They use the phone as a tool to gather and validate customer information. This can aid them in defrauding customers through other channels or allow them to monitor compromised accounts to determine the best time to strike. It could involve extracting personal data from the IVR or social engineering contact center agents.
Preparation: The phone becomes a tool for facilitating fraud elsewhere, like adding an individual’s name to a utility bill — setting the stage for potential identity theft — or verifying a person’s customer status to send scam text messages.
Opportunities and Risks for Contact Centers
According to Smartnumbers platform data, an analysis of the previous 12 months of customer calls shows a cascade of call types and behavior patterns coming into the contact center. Fraudsters are attempting to infiltrate the contact center by hiding behind withheld numbers, spoofing customer numbers or simply moving too quickly for traditional rules-based controls to detect them. Withheld numbers, which make up only 2.8% of inbound calls, are responsible for a staggering 58% of all suspicious calls.
Our research has shown that there’s an urgent need for collaborative, cross-sector approaches to rising fraud threats. We’ve identified that 52% of fraudsters have actively targeted multiple contact centers. Additionally, we’ve found that almost 35% of suspicious calls reaching the contact center can only be identified with machine learning technology because fraudsters rapidly change behavior rendering static-based rules redundant.
In today’s rapidly changing digital landscape, the surge in fraud might seem alarming. However, with advancements in contact center technology and the evolution of communication habits, we’re uniquely positioned to address this.
Studies show that the majority of US adults prefer to use cell phones over landlines. By using cell numbers as unique identifiers linked to customer accounts, you can simplify the security process and improve the customer experience. However, the increasing threat of number spoofing highlights the need for a robust verification mechanism to ensure the authenticity of these mobile numbers. Overall, call numbers have the potential to revolutionize customer identification processes and make interactions smoother and more personal, while also tackling fraud.
Identifying and Beating Contact Center Fraudsters
- Frequent Flyers
Not every fraudster is a mastermind. Some recurrent offenders make little effort to hide their identities. Our studies reveal that these “frequent flyers” make up one in four suspicious calls.
To address your risk:
- Identify suspicious numbers from previous fraud cases
- Check your records to identify where the same number has been connected to multiple accounts — this could be a sign of an account takeover
- Set up a rule to block these calls in your customer support phone system or notify your agents when calls come from these numbers
- Hidden Known Suspicious Callers
It’s possible that fraudsters may choose to withhold their number. However, it’s important to keep in mind that not all callers who withhold their number are fraudulent.
Our research has shown that over 58% of suspicious calls originate from withheld numbers, which poses a significant risk to organizations. Therefore, it’s crucial for contact centers to exercise extra caution when dealing with these types of calls, as they make up one in four suspicious calls received.
To address your risk:
- Collaborate with your telecom provider to block or flag calls originating from previously fraudulent withheld numbers
- Working Together to Fight Fraud
It’s common for fraudsters to target multiple establishments at once, taking advantage of any vulnerabilities they find. Our research shows that almost 20% of suspicious calls are made by fraudsters who have been identified by another contact center — but not by the current organization.
To address your risk:
- Engage with industry counterparts and law enforcement to share details of confirmed fraudsters. Treat these external insights with the same weight as internal data.
- Spotting the Ever-Changing Tell
Fraudsters are agile and constantly adapting their methods. Artificial intelligence, more specifically machine learning, can now identify one-third of suspicious calls because fraudsters are constantly trying new tactics.
Fraudsters learn your controls and will figure out how to work around them. For example, if you block transactions two days after a change of address, fraudsters will call three days after. This is where machine learning comes into play; it will see changes to normal caller behavior.
To address your risk:
- Adopt machine learning to catch changing fraudster behavior in a complex dataset such as thousands of calls into the IVR or to agents
- Don’t rely on traditional rules-based systems; they don’t adapt quickly enough to changing fraudster activity and can be discovered by fraudster who probe defenses
Organizations can turn the tide against fraud, ensuring our contact centers remain trusted and secure. To add another layout of security to your contact center and call center environments, Genesys AppFoundry® Marketplace partner Smartnumbers provides real-time call risk insights before a call is answered. For more information, visit the app listing page on AppFoundry now.
