Improve Your Call Center Performance 7 Ways A Dynamic KBA Solution Helps An IDology, Inc. Whitepaper
Delivering a pleasant consumer experience on the phone is a make or break opportunity for creating positive customer relationships through your call center. In their new book Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, Peppers and Rogers, discuss the scarcity of customers and how critical creating better customer relationships is to building long-term business success. After all, keeping customers is easier and more profitable than having to continually acquire new customers. Whether you are dealing with new or existing customers, a key principle to follow is customers will do business with you tomorrow only if they (and their friends) trust you today 1 But with identity theft recognized as one of the fastest growing crimes and garnering a lot of media attention, our ability to trust, both as consumers and businesses, can be challenging based on the fear of becoming a victim of fraud and suffering financial losses. So how do you foster trust among your callers without placing your business at a higher risk? By using a dynamic knowledge-based authentication (KBA) solution, which is a safe, friendly way to quickly verify a caller s identity and is designed to protect both your consumers and your business from fraud. Dynamic KBA works by presenting a series of multiple-choice questions to which only the person being verified knows the answer. Because these questions are dynamically generated and do not require a previous relationship with the consumer, they can be used in a variety of situations from account origination to existing customers requesting account changes to further verification on transactions that fall outside of normal activity. If your KBA solution provider 1. Peppers, Don & Rogers, Martha; Rules to Break & Laws to Follow ; 2008, p7 page 1
accesses public data records instead of credit data, then typically the questions are based on previous addresses, people the consumer knows or vehicles he or she has owned. Creditbased questions are usually about mortgage payments or credit cards. Often dynamic KBA is confused with the static questions some companies use such as what is your mother s maiden name or what is the name of your favorite pet. The difference is these static questions are based on shared secrets which the consumer chooses and provides the answers to them self. This means you must have a prior relationship with the consumer before these questions can be presented. Instead dynamic KBA is intuitive and develops questions on-the-fly using information found within a consumer s data record. Dynamic KBA gives your call center reps a tool that that can be used in multiple situations because it is able to identify consumers at the beginning of a relationship and after one has already been established. Dynamic KBA is used by a lot of industries for a variety of reasons requiring a high level of verification. Some examples include verifying someone opening a new account to meet compliance regulations or verifying an existing customer before completing an account change request like a change of address or password reset. Dynamic KBA is used for highrisk transactions defined by product, price or even geographical location of the transaction and can also be used as further verification on abnormal account activity such as a money transfer or a large number of purchases within a certain time period Overall, no matter what industry you are in or the reason for deploying, a dynamic KBA solution shows your customers that you are serious about protecting their identity and raises their confidence in your business so you are able to build a better, long-term relationship with them. Here are a few specific benefits of dynamic KBA and some good tips for selecting a solution that will improve your call center performance. page 2
1 Improves Customer Satisfaction We all know how frustrating it is to be transferred from one department to another, much less having to provide the same verifiable information each time you are transferred. Yet, to protect your business from high risk situations, multiple transfers are sometimes necessary so that you can be sure the person is legitimate. KBA allows your reps to quickly approve orders or customer account changes which in turn increases customer satisfaction and improves the chances that a consumer will become a repeat customer. Of course, it is important to select a provider that authenticates someone through friendly, non-intrusive questions. Sure a few customers will find questions intrusive regardless, but this can be mitigated based on the type of questions you present. Look for a provider that offers several types of questions and allows you to set preferences for which questions will be asked. Also consider the type of data sources questions are being dynamically generated from. Credit-based questions tend to be less friendly and harder to answer, even for the real person. And if your demographic includes a lot of younger or new in country customers, a credit-based solution will not be able to generate questions since these people may not have credit files. 2 Shortens Call Times Being able to quickly capture information from consumers and verify their identity using an automated verification process serves to shorten your call times thus maximizing your overall efficiency. The key here is to find a solution that includes ways for your reps to easily and inherently move through the process without having to put the caller on hold or transfer the consumer to a supervisor or another department. You will want to find a solution that also delivers more than ambiguous scores as results. While it is simple for a rep to know how to handle a low or high score, call times suffer when scores fall in the middle. Being able to provide your reps with actionable intelligence reduces the amount of judgment decisions they need to make and will shave seconds off calls, which can quickly add up to more minutes and hours of productivity from your employees. page 3
3 4 5 Increases Revenue The benefit of more employee productivity is more revenue. Plus long hold times and slow processing from delayed approvals puts your business at risk of the consumer taking their business elsewhere. Because dynamic KBA is an automated process, your costs associated with manual review on suspicious activity are reduced, giving you both more revenue and profitability from quickly approving legitimate customers while also stopping fraudsters. To avoid long implementations, find a solution that is offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS). Typically SaaS providers have shorter go-to-market timeframes because they offer multiple deployment methods including a web-portal. If integrating into your existing CRM solution is a requirement, you will want to select a solution that is easy and seamless to integrate so that you can quickly start to reap the revenue rewards. Keeps You Compliant As the government continues to examine threats to our country, from terrorism to the impact of identity theft on consumers, chances are your business has some type of compliance regulations to follow; especially if you are issuing any sort of credit or allowing customers to pay through an installment plan. Dynamic KBA helps multiple industries meet its compliance initiative everything from Know Your Customer and Red Flag Regulations to NACHA and COPPA compliance. Even if you do not have any compliance requirements to follow, having a higher confidence that the person on the line is real helps protect both consumers and your business from identity theft. And finding a solution that does help multiple industries meet compliance standards is great assurance that you are working with a quality provider. Limits Data Exposure within Your Company Data breaches and identity theft are two topics heavily covered by the media and are top of mind for consumers. As a result people are more aware of how their personal information is collected and used, and in some cases are reluctant to share anything beyond their name and address, especially to a call center representative. Because of this, you will want to find a solution that can proof a caller s identity and generate a question set using the consumer s name and address only. Also be sure question answers are never shared and results containing sensitive information are not displayed so that consumer privacy is always protected. Though unpleasant to consider, limiting the amount of data exposed during verification protects your company from employees with less than honorable intentions by reducing the chances of an employee misusing consumer data or coaching a caller on how to answer the questions. page 4
6 7 Stops Fraud On the front-end dynamic KBA stops imposters by verifying someone is who they claim to be using multiple-choice questions. What is important is to evaluate the controls and processes operating on the back-end to prevent bad guys from tricking the system. A good system is supported by deep analytics that examines transactions including how often a name or address is used or what time of day the request is being made, to stop potential fraud. Look for a provider that offers you the ability to set multiple rules and conditions that trigger fraud flags as well as a clear escalation path and easy way to alert you and your reps to the situation. Monitors and Improves Your Reps Overall Performance Through a variety of call center reporting mechanisms you can monitor your company s performance and specific customer service representative performance. This information is especially useful in pinpointing reps that require further training or need more coaching. Not to mention providing a great way to boost employee moral by being able to spot the superstars in your call center and give them recognition. When evaluating a solution provider, find one that offers real-time reporting both within standard dashboard reports and custom reports. This allows you to immediately evaluate your call center s results and gives you a better advantage to respond to situations that need your attention. About IDology, Inc. IDology, Inc provides real-time technology solutions that verify an individual s identity and age for anyone conducting business in consumer-not-present environments, such as a call center or online, to help drive revenue, decrease costs and prevent fraud. What makes us different is that we do this in a way that builds more confidence with your customers by protecting sensitive data and promoting consumer privacy. Founded in 2003, IDology is the only Software as a Service identity provider to offer an on-demand change management tool that allows client s to design and build the entire identity verification process and customer experience, including within an integrated solution, without having to rely on internal IT resources or contact IDology s customer service. For more information, visit www.idology.com or call 866-520-1234. page 5