Get What’s Coming to You

Last but not least are, unfortunately, your own employees. No one knows better how to beat your system than the people you pay to utilize it every day.

Best Practices for Detecting External Fraud

In general, there are two types of fraud: internal (done by employees) and external (done by everyone else). These types of fraud take numerous forms but always result in the same outcome: The business owner loses money.

Types of external fraud include:
- identity theft;
- e-mail, chat room and instant messaging schemes;
- re-shipping schemes;
- card generators;
- hackers;
- dumpster divers; and
- skimming (magnetic stripe readers)

Every business is different, of course, and some best practices to fight external fraud will make more sense to you than others. While you want to protect your company, an overly zealous attempt can result in customers feeling insulted because you’re asking for what may seem to be too much information, or by declining a transaction that may be legitimate but doesn’t fall within the parameters you’ve established for authenticated transactions.

The key in many instances is giving your contact center employees the data they need to detect potentially fraudulent transactions, and empower them to act on those hunches right away. Following are some basic steps to identify external fraud.

Check for proper addresses and phone numbers. One of the most fundamental detection tactics is to verify customers’ addresses and phone numbers. Compare ANI (Automatic Number Identification) to the phone number provided. If the numbers don’t match existing database information, instruct your contact center staffers to proceed with caution.

Beware of suspicious addresses/hotspot countries. The same goes for suspicious addresses that have proven in the past to be either fake or high-risk, such as prisons and P.O. boxes, and hotspot countries that historically have shown higher instances of fraud (e.g., Nigeria).