If you’re pressed for time, but keen to know the key findings of our latest contact centre security report, then look no further. This quick-read blog distils the key opportunities and risks for contact centres today, writes Grant White.
This is an excerpt from our Contact Centre Security Report 2023: the hidden fraud lurking in the shadows. You can find out more and download the full report here.
Our research draws from the Smartnumbers platform and an analysis of the previous 12 months’ customer calls. Here, we found a range of different call types and patterns of behaviour, a significant percentage of which needed to be given special attention in the contact centre.
Here’s what we found:
As many as 1 in 500 calls to the contact centre are suspicious
Whether hiding behind withheld numbers, spoofing customer numbers, or simply moving too fast to be detected by traditional methods, we found that as many as 1 in 500 calls to the contact centre could be from a fraudster.
Withheld numbers equate to just 2.8% of inbound calls, but 58% of all suspicious calls originate from them
There are many reasons why numbers are withheld, and they are not always bad. But since the majority of the withheld number calls we analysed were identified as suspicious, we consider withheld numbers to be of high risk to the contact centre.
Mobile phones make up nearly 80% of inbound calls to the contact centre
There has been a shift in how customers communicate, and mobile phones are now the preferred means. Mobiles are far more likely than a landline to represent a 1-2-1 relationship and those numbers are kept longer too. This creates an opportunity to deliver personalised customer experiences leveraging the mobile phone number as the unique identifier.
Just 3 in 10,000 of spoofed number calls are suspicious
While there is growing fear of number spoofing, our research found that the vast majority of spoofed calls (where there is a mismatch between the Presentation CLI and Network CLI) are legitimate. In reality, fraudsters will manipulate both the Network CLI and Presentation CLI, making them much more difficult to detect using a mismatch cue. This is where tools like artificial intelligence represent a significant opportunity to identify suspicious calls faster.
Almost 35% of suspicious calls reaching the contact centre are not identifiable without artificial intelligence
Caller behaviour could be the biggest factor in recognising high-risk and fraudulent calls. Smartnumbers Machine Learning technology is the most effective way of identifying fraud as fraudsters are cunning and will learn the boundaries of rules-based fraud controls.
52% of identified fraudsters target multiple contact centres across sectors
Contact centre leaders need to work together and share information to help build a more comprehensive view of fraud and suspicious activity. Working together, even across traditional sector lines, we stand a better chance of tackling the problem.
If you’d like to learn more, please contact us. You can also download the full report.
