When financial institutions, telcos, governments and other organizations talk about authenticating customers and preventing fraud, the conversation has historically centered on the contact center. This was especially true in the age of call centers when the primary way that consumers engaged was by picking up the phone and talking with live customer service agents.

While voice is still an important way that brands engage with customers (especially for escalations), it now complements lower effort, self-service digital offerings that consumers increasingly prefer. The proliferation of chat, mobile apps, web and other digital interaction channels requires brands to broaden their authentication and fraud prevention strategies to cover the omni-channel and its varied components.

The sea change in channels and consumer expectations is happening at breakneck speed.  To help contact center, risk, and security clients keep pace, Nuance commissioned Forrester to deconstruct the evolving omni-channel authentication and fraud prevention landscape.

Forrester surveyed more than 500 North American executives and found that:

• Customer authentication in mobile and web channels is exploding. Not surprisingly, fraudsters are watching this behavior because fraud in digital channels now outpaces telephone fraud.
• In response, organizations are shifting their fraud prevention strategies from voice to digital channels, as well as implementing cross-channel authentication
• The biggest challenge to success is that many firms rely on PINs, passwords, and knowledge-based authentication questions – data that’s cheap and readily available on the dark web
• In response, biometrics is a strategy many are looking to, including voice, behavioral, facial and fingerprint
• This is because firms using biometrics in more than one channel report that they’re better able to keep up with fraudsters

The takeaway is that security and CX can co-exist. Learn more in the Forrester study and its companion on-demand webinar with Andras Cser, VP and principal analyst – both available here (registration required).