How we can help protect airline contact centres
Airlines are an attractive target for fraudsters, with customer accounts providing access to financial details and valuable loyalty points.
Airline fraud can be hard to spot
Typical types of airline fraud such as booking tickets using stolen credit cards, loyalty miles theft, and fake travel agencies selling over priced tickets fraud can be tricky to spot in the contact centre. But there are certain traits that can help identify calls from fraudsters:
- Calls received from the same number for multiple customer accounts
- Multiple, frequent calls from the same number to the contact centre IVR
- Caller is attempting to avoid detection by withholding their number
- Numbers used may be known to contact centre fraud teams in other companies and sectors, such as banks, telcos or insurance companies
With the right technology in place, it is possible to flag suspicious callers in the contact centre and stop fraud in its tracks.
The airline point of view
Attacks on airlines, like the other industries we work with, are typically coordinated across multiple customer channels by organised crime groups. And in our experience, contact centres are increasingly becoming a critical entry point, with data-gathering forming the early stages of these fraud attacks.
Our recent multi-sector research reflects this – high numbers of travel industry respondents reported fraudulent activity in contact centres both in the interactive voice response (IVR) system (66%) and with call agents (55%).
“Fraudsters are constantly looking for softer targets in sectors like retail or airlines, where they can conduct last-minute attacks such as fraudulent ticket purchases,” Tim Burton, chief product and success officer at Smartnumbers.
When fraudsters target contact centres in this way, it’s often missed by typical security checks.
