For Fraud, Take the Path of Smart Resistance, AKA, Smart Friction
Friction is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad word (apologies to Judith Viorst) when it comes to customer experience, but for personalized verification paths – catching fraud while reducing false positives – smart friction can be your digital ally.
So, what is ‘smart friction’ exactly? Smart friction is a technique that leverages visibility into an online user’s intent, revealed through their real-time behaviors, to drive a ‘friction-right’ customer experience, based on perceived fraud potential. That predictive lens into fraud is exactly what Neuro-ID provides, which is critical to applying smart friction.
Smart friction relies on the ability to see anomalous behavior in real time and activating appropriate, additional measures (e.g., added screening, step-up authentication) to stop fraud from getting through an organization’s current fraud detection system. When customers go through a digital application process, Neuro-ID’s technology captures and translates the in-session behaviors as they complete online forms, unlocking an entirely new behavioral layer. Organizations, typically operating off of final input data, now have thousands of behavioral data points, translated and delivered in real time as scores and attributes. Fraud management systems relying on historical data, even with artificial intelligence/machine learning models in place, are challenged and limited in their efficacy in detecting sophisticated fraud attempts, which is only increasing as we go into the second wave of the COVID pandemic. The in-session behavioral layer serves as a critical safety net to catch fraud, before it happens.
On the other hand, recognizing the absence of nefarious behavior creates an opportunity for fast tracking good customers and reducing the friction they experience during their journey. This behavioral layer alleviates the pain caused by over-tooled or heavy-handed verification measures that contribute to the systemic problem of false positives. Neuro-ID’s behavioral signal provides new visibility to foster a smoother path, which increases conversion and drives a better overall experience for high-quality prospects and customers. This helps address the opportunity cost of perfectly good customers abandoning their journey, getting unduly denied, or getting lost somewhere in the verification process.
Unfortunately, many online companies are not able to determine fraud and high risk early in the process and are putting every customer through the same process, almost like treating every website visitor as a criminal. That’s like locking up 10,000 people to insure that we get the 100 criminals. You certainly do catch the criminals; however, the goal is to maximize a positive customer experience and conversion, isn’t it?
For more than a decade, Neuro-ID has developed and matured its Human Analytics™ technology, capturing and interpreting how someone taps, types and swipes in real time, simplifying access to an organization’s behavioral data to reveal key insights into the intent and experience of every digital interaction.
This powerful new view into customer behavior precisely enables smart friction – to systematically reduce unnecessary friction for genuine customers, while adding a valuable new layer of defense to stop 1st and 3rd party fraud. It’s a slight shift in how we think about friction; it’s not all bad. We certainly help catch the bad actors out there, but perhaps more important, we’re out to catch the good ones, too. When you employ smart friction, or take the path of smart resistance, the implications for improved conversion and the overall digital customer experience are game changing.
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