Call Center Fraud On The Rise
Destination CRM, Friday, November 10,2023
At a time when commerce is increasingly conducted digitally, consumers still expect call centers to deliver timely and trustworthy customer service when they need it. However, a new TransUnion report finds that call centers have increasingly become a target for fraud, leading to a complicated balancing act of delivering efficient service and maintaining customer account security.
The survey found that more than half of respondents say that fraud attacks on call centers are on the rise. Financial industry respondents reported an even more acute increase, with a full 90 percent noticing at least some observable growth in attacks. Eighty percent said attacks were up more than 10 percent since 2021, and 20 percent have seen increases of 80 percent since 2021.
"Through the use of tactics, such as spoofed phone numbers and social engineering, combined with personal information obtained from identity theft scams and data breaches, fraudsters have become more focused on call centers as a target to access and take over accounts," said Lance Hood, senior director of omnichannel authentication at TransUnion. "More than ever, it's critically important for call centers to find effective and efficient ways to separate legitimate callers from potentially fraudulent, high-risk ones in a way that reduces friction for the consumer."