Working alongside the Webex Contact Center team, Pindrop has certified Pindrop® Passport and Pindrop® Protect and added them to the Webex App Hub.
We are dedicated to helping our customers quickly and easily authenticate inbound calls, drive automation in the IVR (Interactive Voice Response system), and detect fraud.
With voice-based authentication methods, contact centers can reduce caller frustration, shorten resolution times, and improve security and compliance.
Using the Pindrop® API Connector within the Webex Contact Center, we seamlessly integrate into contact center call flows, enabling quick setup and easy deployment.
How it works
In any partner integration, Pindrop® Technologies captures a copy of an inbound call and runs a thorough analysis. The analysis of an inbound call is predicated upon a deep, carrier-style integration where the Pindrop® Solution ingests the call audio, metadata, keystroke presses, and other signaling.
This approach allows our technology to perform an accurate, multifactor analysis of the inbound caller’s voice, device, behavior, network, risk, and liveness. This will help you determine if the caller is a genuine consumer or a fraudster.
For more insight into how fraudsters operate, check out our article on the fraudster playbook.
Webex Contact Center: Customer SIPREC integration
The diagram below showcases the robust architecture of the Webex Contact Center + Pindrop integration. It illustrates a scenario where a customer using a premise-based Session Border Controller (SBC) routes calls to Pindrop. Pindrop also supports a flexible Bring Your Own Carrier (BYOC) model, allowing you to route calls directly from your carrier. Contact Pindrop to determine if your carrier is supported.
Key elements of the Webex CC + Pindrop integration
1. Pindrop® API connector
The Pindrop® API Connector enables your organization to establish a secure trust relationship between your Pindrop account and the Webex Contact Center, allowing you to access Pindrop’s voice authentication and fraud detection services seamlessly.
Once the trust relationship is established, integrating Pindrop’s capabilities is as straightforward as making HTTP requests within your Webex CC call flows. These requests allow you to initiate voice authentication, detect fraud, capture key data points for analysis, and make intelligent routing decisions.
2. Easy-to-use agent UI
Pindrop has constructed a pre-built agent user interface, delivered through the Webex Contact Center agent desktop.
This helps implement Pindrop intelligence and policy-driven instructions to Webex Contact Center agents as clearly and intuitively as possible. This user-friendly interface helps agents easily understand and apply Pindrop’s capabilities in their daily operations.
3. Supportive resources for self-guided implementation
To simplify the process, we have authored a detailed user guide that provides clear, step-by-step instructions to help contact center administrators implement Pindrop® Solutions in their Webex Contact Center environment.
Additionally, Pindrop resources are readily available for support and guidance, ensuring a smooth and successful integration.
Real-world success
Some of the largest banks, credit unions, insurance companies, and healthcare providers in the world trust Pindrop to combat fraud and deliver secure, efficient customer service. To read more about how Pindrop integrates with other leading contact center platforms, check out our posts on Five9 + Pindrop authentication and fraud detection or how to integrate Pindrop® Solutions and Genesys Cloud CX.
Ongoing collaboration and future development
At Pindrop, we’re committed to continuous innovation and close collaboration with the Webex Contact Center. We adapt our solutions to address evolving customer needs. Our teams actively monitor and enhance the current integration, exploring new capabilities to support future use cases.
Do you have a call center challenge you’d like Pindrop and Webex Contact Center to address? We’d love to hear from you.
Using Pindrop® Protect and Pindrop® Passport, a 90-year-old credit union with 7.3B in assets, reduced Average Handle Time by 66% (from 0:54 seconds to 0:18 seconds) in 90 days. Pindrop® solutions streamlined the call handling process, enabling agents to quickly identify and authenticate callers, reducing the time spent on each call.
Before integrating Pindrop® solutions, the credit union suspected that they were being targeted with a high volume of fraud from a few bad actors. By how much? They couldn’t say, and had no clear path for uncovering the suspected fraud. With the implementation of Pindrop® Passport and Protect, our solutions helped this 90-year-old credit union identify repeat fraudsters who were running targeted campaigns and enhance the experience for their members by reducing average handle time (AHT) by 66% (from 54 seconds to 18 seconds) in the first two months of implementation.
About the Credit Union
Established in 1935, the credit union is a member-owned financial cooperative with $7.3B in assets, 260k members, and 920 employees across 60 locations.
The credit union is unique in that it serves both personal (B2C) and business (B2B) banking members, adding a layer of complexity to their fraud risk management strategy. This dual focus necessitated a sophisticated solution capable of mitigating financial risk for both consumer and commercial services.
Member Challenge
Like many financial institutions today, this credit union was proactive in addressing the rising fraud. For example, in 2023, the fraud call rate for banks was 1 in 699 calls vs. 1 in 976 calls for credit unions. The fraud call rate for credit unions rose 71% between 2021 -23.
The organization served both business (B2B) and consumer (B2C) members, each with a unique set of risks to accommodate. With B2B members, the credit union faced challenges typically associated with retail banking, like identity theft, card fraud, and phishing attacks targeting individual members. These risks often involve high-volume, lower-value transactions, requiring comprehensive identity verification processes and real-time transaction monitoring. Additionally, consumer-specific fraud prevention should balance security with user experience, as personal banking customers expect seamless, frictionless interactions.
Conversely, B2B members introduce a different risk profile, as seen in larger transactions, like complex account structures, and more sophisticated fraud, like vendor payment fraud. Business accounts often involve multiple users with varying levels of authority, requiring more nuanced access controls and approvals. Additionally, commercial members may require specialized services like wire transfers or ACH payments, which present a new and unique set of fraud vulnerabilities.
The intersection of these B2C and B2B risk landscapes created a challenging environment for the credit union, where a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to fraud prevention was insufficient.
Member Goals
For the implementation of a new solution, the credit union had three clear goals in mind:
- Reduce average handle time for call center agents and improve call friction (time spent in validation) for members
- Detect and ultimately reduce fraud throughout the call center
This bank takes responsibility for security across its three business segments – retail banking, commercial banking, and wealth management with the highest level of priority. The bank’s thousands of colleagues focus on helping both individuals and businesses be successful in operating across its markets in Texas, Arizona, California, Florida, and Michigan.
Before Pindrop® Solutions
Account takeovers were on the rise for this credit union. For example, potential fraudsters were repeatedly calling in using spoofed numbers. As a first step, the credit union wanted to understand if a repeat caller was targeting them, and second, they wanted to detect fraud when it was happening. The credit union’s Assistant VP of Digital Services shared, “We had one fraudster who called in requesting a line of credit for $30,000. They did this by moving the money out of a member account and into a shell account using the member’s information. Bad loans were also rampant because members easily bypassed the Knowledge-Based Authentication questions (KBAs). And, this was just the fraud that we knew about.”
Although fraud was rising, the credit union was determined to find the right solution and justify the cost. However, they knew that call center agents were uneasy, acting as the front line for fraud, and they were losing agents.
The credit union was aware of the evolving fraud landscape, where the human ear can no longer be relied on to detect a synthetic voice. With the proliferation of generative AI, easy accessibility to AI voice engines (+800% increase from ‘23 to ‘21)1, and low cost to use, the way we see and hear content has irrevocably changed. Today, the ability to manipulate audio is easy, and humans are unable to tell the difference. For example, in a study by the International Security Program, human detection of AI generated audio was labeled ‘as good as a coin toss’ , detecting fake audio with just 54.5% accuracy (compared to 62% accuracy for fake images). Traditional methods used by organizations like KBAs and one-time passwords (OTPs) are also vulnerable to synthetic audio attacks.
Why Pindrop
“The trust factor was there”
The credit union was seeking possible solutions for about a year, with a primary goal of ensuring security was ‘job zero.’ The total time needed to implement a solution was also an important consideration; how quickly could they mitigate fraud while doing so accurately and securely?
According to the credit union, others in the space offered various fraud detection features, but none had the entire package that Pindrop offered. Additionally, internal advocates within the team who understood the fraud landscape (e.g., the security team) advocated strongly for the solution and knew it was needed to help the organization uncover and mitigate fraud. The Quality Assurance Manager added, “Our Cyber Security Manager was a strong internal advocate for Pindrop. He said that Pindrop had the best technology vs any other provider.”
After seeing a demo, the credit union met with several other vendors who needed more member references than Pindrop. A consistent message they heard from existing Pindrop customers was, ‘Pindrop saved us.’
“Pindrop created the original technology, and it was easy to build a trust factor with the Pindrop team; they were the experts,” said the Quality Assurance Manager.
Ultimately, the team was approved to proceed with Pindrop because they demonstrated the product’s ROA.
The credit union went with Pindrop because of our:
- Strong reputation
- Premium technology
- Expertise across the team
What ROA did Pindrop® Solutions deliver?
“Once we implemented the Pindrop Passport and Pindrop Protect solutions, things took off.”
Since deploying Pindrop’s fully integrated authentication and fraud detection solution, the credit union has significantly reduced the success rate of fraud within its phone channel, seeing a 50% reduction in the number of fraud incidents overall.
Launched in September, 2023
Once implementation was complete, the credit union was surprised to see how many fraud attempts were happening; it was considerably more than they initially thought.
When Pindrop® Protect and Pindrop® Passport were turned on, credit union members were initially apprehensive; they no longer had significant hurdles, such as answering lengthy questions, to clear when getting through to the credit union. For example, within the first two months, the credit union went from an average of 54 seconds to identify/ validate a member, down to 18 seconds on average. Member satisfaction improved significantly, and average handle time was reduced, which meant average wait time also decreased. In fact, the credit union observed a 67% decrease (36 seconds) in time to authenticate members.
Additionally, the credit union’s agent experience improved dramatically, reducing overall agent attrition in just 90 days. For example, after launching Pindrop Protect and Pindrop Passport in September, the credit union’s employee turnover was the lowest they had ever seen in December, just one quarter after implementation.
Since the deployment of Pindrop Protect, the credit union has experienced an 88% reduction in fraud incidents occurring within their call center channel. In one month alone, Pindrop Protect detected nine fraudulent calls against an alert rate of 0.68% and a review ratio 241:1.
Since the deployment of Pindrop Passport, the credit union authenticated 23,188 calls, and low-risk authenticated an additional 11,132 calls. In one month, Pindrop Passport demonstrated an increase of 1.54% in enrollment penetration (0:6min), which measures the percentage of calls tied to previously enrolled identity claim vs the call population with an identity claim.
Not Just ‘Another Vendor’
Don’t take our word for it, the Credit Union shared their experience with the Pindrop implementation as well as their experience with our team:
“The ongoing support from the Pindrop team has been outstanding- they are extremely easy to work with, and they always deliver on their word. The service provided is white glove and turnkey. They are by far one of the most flexible and understanding vendors that we have worked with. Their team took the time to ensure that all stakeholders were armed with the information necessary to ensure that we could hit the ground running. Throughout the entire process, they answered our questions thoroughly.”
“In fact, Pindrop makes us aware of additional features that we might not be taking advantage of that are included based on the contract we have, like Custom Attributes. That is not something that you would expect from a vendor. This kind of service is what truly sets Pindrop apart from others.”
– Assistant VP, Digital Services at Credit Union
Sources Cited
1. Open source projects on Hugging Face leveraging an AI voice tool (from 38 in ‘21 to 352 in ‘23)
Related research + insights
Access expert research, detailed guides, and practical resources on voice security to strengthen your contact center’s defenses.
Pindrop® Passport saves millions in average handling time savings
The Challenge
Huge Insurance Co., one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. was experiencing unnecessarily high average handle times, causing serious slowdowns in customer resolutions.
To make matters worse, failed attempts at protecting customer data drove service agents, analysts, and leadership at the organization to distrust did not completely trust their existing processes for validation and identification. Huge Insurance Co needed a solution that could speed up time to resolution, reduce average handle times, and restore confidence in its ability to protect customer data.
The Solution
Understanding the advantage multifactor authentication provides your contact center is paramount when addressing today’s challenges. Verification of identity curbs fraud costs and can facilitate time saving and consumer-focused benefits for organizations of any size, and passive multifactor authentication is the best and most effective way.
We’ve compiled data from a well-known yet anonymized Pindrop customer to illustrate
how Pindrop Passport made an impact on their consumer experience and improved operational efficiency. Because of the nature of our business we have shielded our client names, reach out if you want to learn more about this case and its outcome.
Huge Insurance Co. seeking help in 3 main areas:
- Huge Insurance Co.’s reliance on KBAs not only agitated customers but caused operational inefficiencies as a result of the time-consuming inquiries forced during every incoming call.
- Customer service agents began to distrust their outdated authentication procedures and were forced to become detectives with only KBAs as tools to discern genuine callers.
- Every incoming caller was asked a minimum of four knowledge-based authentication questions, causing unnecessarily high average handle and hold times.
Benefits of Pindrop
- Pindrop® Passport requires no human interaction
- Passive Authentication empowers agents
- Reduction in AHT leads to cost savings
“Pindrop has helped us tremendously
improving the
user experience for our callers and is a critical part of our caller authentication
ecosystem.”
FRAUD OPERATIONS HEAD
Pindrop helped save $864K + authenticated 88% of calls
By authenticating 88% of eligible calls for Huge Insurance Co. passively and before being connected to an agent, it restored trust among staff and customers within their contact center. In addition, after implementing Pindrop Passport for (length of time) Huge Insurance Co. saved $864,000. Passport nearly eliminated KBAs, strengthened frontline defense, and reduced costs for this customer.
How we do it
Passport uses proprietary multifactor authentication processes, leveraging thousands of factors for the identification of incoming callers.
Calls Per year
in Cost Savings
Saved Per Call
Related research + insights
Access expert research, detailed guides, and practical resources on voice security to strengthen your contact center’s defenses.
Combined with Protect, Fraud Loss Avoidance and Passport Authentication—CommunityAmerica Credit Union’s benefits are in high-cost savings!
The Challenge
CommunityAmerica Credit Union is a beloved and trusted local credit union, that provides products and services to their extended Kansas City family. Their commitment to this family, to serve them, support them, and protect their finances has made CommunityAmerica Credit Union an attractive and trusted institution for everyday people in Kansas City.
CommunityAmerica Credit Union’s member focus has driven them to search for ways to continue to simplify member service and support; to improve data protection for the members they consider extended family. That focus and genuine care have now transformed into tangible advanced technologies that are delivering improvements across the organization. CommunityAmerica Credit Union is delivering frictionless, brand strengthening, member service and comprehensive, flexible, and predictive consumer data protection with Pindrop.
The Solution
Like many financial organizations, CommunityAmerica Credit Union recognizes the high risk that fraud can present within the call center. As call volume spiked due to rapid changes in member service caused by health concerns and mandated shutdowns, CommunityAmerica Credit Union sought out solutions to their evolving security challenges. From the prevention of unauthorized access, account takeover, and the mitigation of fraud loss and associated costs across channels; to the instant verification of member identity which manifests downstream as faster resolution speeds, improved member effort scores, and operational savings – CommunityAmerica Credit Union is delivering frictionless, brand strengthening, service to their membership with comprehensive, flexible, and predictive fraud technology with Pindrop.
Our partnership + challenges
Pindrop solutions verify members passively before connecting to agents, predict fraud 60 days before it occurs, identifies at-risk accounts to thwart organized fraud rings, and enables fraud teams to stop fraud loss in real-time, reducing fraud-related costs, and improving efficiency through false-positive rates below 1%.
Through this partnership, CommunityAmerica Credit Union reduced and prevented fraud losses, improved membership service metrics, and strengthened brand trust with their KC family by preventing fraudulent activity across channels and removing roadblocks to quick, personalized, and secure issue resolution.
Pindrop Protect quickly surfaced fraud patterns and volumes that were highly actionable. The user interface is so easy to use, the bank’s fraud analysts can see the details about each call and what factor was influencing the highest risk scores. With the insights from the phone channel that Pindrop Protect provides, the analyst can immediately block transactions and requests from occurring in other channels such as in-app and wire transfers as well as IVR services. In less than one year, the bank measured its ability to prevent fraud attacks on over $56M in assets with Pindrop.
Protect leverages multiple factors to analyze thousands of data points using 5 unique technology engines:
- Device – PhonePrinting: Analyzes over 1,300 characteristics of a call’s full audio to determine risk and catch first-time fraud
- Voice – Deep Voice: Next-gen voice identification, optimized for noisy conditions, speaker aging, & multi-voice enrollment
- Metadata – Network Analysis: Analyzes ANI risk/velocity, account and carrier risk, smart white/blacklisting, phone number reputation
- Connections – Trace Technology: Graph analysis of relationships between activities, accounts, and calls across time.
- Behavior – Heuristic Analysis: Non-monetary transactions, robotic dialing, key press habits
How Pindrop helped
CommunityAmerica Credit Union began with the initial implementation of Pindrop®
Protect, to address fraud attempts on member accounts. Following this initial deployment, to improve their members’ experience and address operational costs, CommunityAmerica Credit Union adopted Pindrop Passport to validate their member’s
identity over the phone.
Passport passively works in the background to verify members’ identity without requiring
genuine members to jump through hoops. Passport uses proprietary multi-factor risk-
based authentication processes, leveraging factors including call risk, behavior, device,
and voice for the identification of incoming callers. To mitigate fraudulent activity
targeted at CommunityAmerica Credit Union and improve operational costs and member experience, CommunityAmerica Credit Union leverages data points gleaned from 5 technologies working together on the Pindrop platform—that power two separate solutions for caller authentication and verification and the other for fraud detection and mitigation.
Passive, multi-factor caller authentication + verification
As Members continue to be passively enrolled and authenticated with Passport; CommunityAmerica Credit Union is on a trajectory to save ~$400K in call center operationalization costs in 2020 enabling better value for members.
The results:
- CommunityAmerica Credit Union prevented over $570,000 in fraud exposure within months – without sacrificing CES or adding further friction into the process.
- 115 seconds got removed from total call times.
- KBAs were reduced to 2 and when all KBAs, 4 in total, were removed for callers.
- CommunityAmerica Credit Union saw reductions in average hold time across 98% of its calls, greatly reducing operations costs associated with the additional time that was once used for asking questions and extending members’ experiences unnecessarily.
Combined with Protect, Fraud Loss Avoidance + Passport Authentication—CommunityAmerica Credit Union’s total benefit is a 4X return on investment (ROI) with the partnership with Pindrop
What’s next
1. IVR Adapted Technologies to Provide 100% Coverage
This expansion of anti-fraud capabilities into the IVR will enable CommunityAmerica Credit Union to predict what accounts will be “at-risk” 60 days before a fraudster attempts to make a withdrawal.
2. Further Optimization Leveraging Automated APIs
By automating APIs, CommunityAmerica Credit Union can focus on making sure 80% of incoming calls have identity claims.
3. Graphic Algorithm for Fraud Detection
CommunityAmerica Credit Union will soon be able to leverage the analysis of relationships between activities, accounts, and calls across time.
Related research + insights
Access expert research, detailed guides, and practical resources on voice security to strengthen your contact center’s defenses.
Today’s Authentication Challenges
Enterprises’ reliance on knowledge based authentication questions (KBAs), stand-alone voice biometrics, and other legacy authentication solutions have compromised customer experience by extending call handle times and failing to protect customers’ accounts, leaving brand reputation and customer loyalty in jeopardy. This will be an increasingly challenging feat for call centers as fraudster voice synthesis and customer voice aging continue to grow. So what are next-gen organizations doing to secure the voice channel?
Solving the Problem with Pindrop® Passport
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our groundbreaking Pindrop® Passport. Passport passively authenticates callers as they naturally engage with a call center by combining our proprietary Deep Voice™ biometrics, second-generation Phoneprinting™ technology, and Toneprinting™ behavioral analytics. Passport determines if a caller has the right device, voice, and behavior to access an account while maintaining a seamless customer experience, lessened operating expenses, and reduced fraud exposure.
Deep Voice™ Biometric Engine
Built with an emphasis on security, our proprietary Deep Voice™ biometric engine is the world’s first end-to-end deep neural network-based speaker recognition system. The Deep Voice™ biometric engine analyzes short utterances of a caller’s speech, making it the starting point for all voice interactions. This technology removes background noises from a call, focusing solely on the caller’s voice, allowing more accurate authentication via voice.
Phoneprinting & Toneprinting Technologies
Our second-generation Phoneprinting technology analyzes over 1,300 features of a call’s full audio to create a high definition profile, detect anomalies that indicate fraud, and determine device type, geolocation, and carrier. Additionally, Toneprinting technology analyzes tone-based signals and metadata from every keypress made by a caller to identify their device and behavior.
The Future of Voice
It is clear voice will be continuing to enter more industries as an interface, which brings authentication into question. Authentication faces challenges due to a number of shortcomings, including poor accuracy, short utterances, voice aging, and ambient noise, all of which are addressed through Pindrop® Passport and the Deep Voice™ biometric engine. Advances in machine learning are enabling natural conversations as the latest mode of interaction with technology, and our Deep Voice™ engine is capable of identity verification across every voice interaction whether that be in cars, airports, homes, smart speakers, or online and mobile transactions.