Preventing Voice Fraud in the Contact Centre

Madeline Jacobson at Creovai explores why contact centres are major voice fraud targets, the direct and indirect costs of fraud and the approaches contact centres are using to combat fraud.

A stressed contact centre agent at a bank takes a call from someone who says their credit card was stolen. The caller sounds distressed and wants the agent to help them log into their mobile banking app so they can see if any charges have been made.

The agent begins walking through the verification process, but the caller says they can’t remember the answers to their security questions and stresses that they need to get into their account right away.

The agent, sensing that the caller is becoming frustrated and worrying about their handle time, bypasses the security questions and helps the caller reset their account password.

You can probably see where this hypothetical scenario is going. A bad actor gets access to a customer’s bank account by manipulating a contact centre agent, ultimately costing the bank and damaging the real customer’s trust.

Voice fraud is becoming increasingly common in contact centres. According to a TransUnion survey, 6% of all calls into US contact centres last year were fraud attempts, up 33% from the previous year.

Customer impersonation is the most common type of voice fraud, typically involving a bad actor pretending to be a customer to gain account access or collect more personal information to use in future attacks.

However, voice cloning fraud – which involves using AI deepfake technology to replicate a person’s voice – is on the rise. There are now more than 350 voice cloning tools available, and deepfake calls rose 1337% between 2023 and 2024.

As fraud attempts become increasingly sophisticated, they’re also becoming increasingly challenging for humans to detect – creating an urgent need for fraud prevention technology that can identify suspicious patterns at scale and empower agents to respond effectively in real time.

Why Are Contact Centres Vulnerable to Voice Fraud?

Contact centres face a perfect storm of conditions that make them attractive fraud targets. The high-volume, fast-paced environment creates multiple vulnerabilities for bad actors to exploit.

Pressure to Meet Performance Targets

Contact centres often hold their agents accountable for meeting average handle time (AHT) and first-call resolution (FCR) targets.

This may cause agents to rush through calls, potentially missing verification steps or failing to spot red flags in their effort to get to a resolution as quickly as possible.

Emotional Calls That Take a Toll on Agents

It’s no secret that being a frontline agent can be emotionally taxing – 87% of contact centre workers report experiencing high stress.

Taking an already-stressed agent and adding in emotional or urgent pleas from a caller (common social engineering fraud tactics) is a recipe for successful voice fraud attacks.

Many Agents = Many Attack Opportunities

The numbers game works in fraudsters’ favour. If a fraudster senses that one agent is becoming suspicious, they can simply hang up and call back.

With large contact centres receiving thousands of calls daily, they’ll likely reach a different agent who may not have their guard up. Bad actors only need to find one vulnerable entry point to succeed.

What Is Voice Fraud Costing Contact Centres?

Voice fraud comes with both direct and indirect costs:

Direct Financial Losses

The direct financial impact of voice fraud is the most obvious one, with costs stemming from successful account takeovers, fraudulent refunds, and unauthorized transactions.

A study from technology company Regula found that surveyed businesses across industries lost an average of $450,000 in the past year to deepfake fraud alone. Financial service businesses (a sector at a particularly high risk for fraud attempts) reported losing more than $600,000 on average.

Operational Costs

One of the ways contact centres combat fraud is by adding more verification steps (e.g., requiring a caller to provide their account number and answer a series of security questions). More verification steps mean longer call times, driving up the average cost per call.

Reputational Damage

Reputational damage can be the most costly consequence of fraud. When customers learn their accounts were compromised through a contact centre breach, trust erodes quickly.

With 73% of customers saying they would abandon a brand after just one negative experience, the long-term impact of fraud-related security incidents can be devastating.

The indirect costs of voice fraud compound over time. Contact centres may need to invest in additional training, implement more complex security protocols, or face increased regulatory scrutiny, all of which divert resources from customer experience improvements and growth initiatives.

What Are Contact Centres Doing to Combat Voice Fraud?

Most contact centres are taking a multi-pronged approach to combating voice fraud. Common tactics include:

• Voice Biometrics – This involves using a customer’s voice to validate their identity. However, sophisticated voice cloning technology can now get past this.
• Multifactor Authentication – This requires customers to provide two or more forms of identity verification, such as a personal identification number and answers to security questions. This creates more friction for fraudsters, but knowledge-based authentication (KBA) is becoming less effective. 58% of contact centre leaders surveyed by TransUnion said the use of stolen customer information to pass KBA has become more common in the past year.
• Agent Training – Agents may receive ongoing training on signs of fraud, common scams, and steps to take if they suspect they’re speaking to a bad actor.
• Call Reviews/Quality Assurance – Contact centres may use manual call reviews and quality assurance to look for fraud attempts and missed verification steps. However, contact centres can typically review less than 5% of their interactions through manual QA, meaning they’re likely missing the vast majority of fraud attempts.

The fundamental challenge is that fraud is evolving too fast for traditional defenses to keep up with. Fraudsters continuously refine their scripts, test new social engineering tactics, and leverage AI tools to create more convincing personas.

Contact centres need defenses that can evolve at the same pace – which is where conversation intelligence and agent assist technology come into play.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Creovai – View the Original Article

For more information about Creovai - visit the Creovai Website

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Creovai
Reviewed by: Megan Jones