What authentication brings to the Customer Journey
When it comes to the user experience and the customer journey, authentication providers tend to only focus on the authentication flows. Authentication Providers focus on gaps and flaws in security, we do extensive tests and hackathons to find and solve these. We do everything from sophisticated key management to securing the communication between the authentication app and server.
Authentication providers need to think bigger. They must consider how the authentication app, in the end, will contribute to the service facing the customer. Most providers believe it is up to the service provider to design the perfect customer journey. And there is some truth in that. Why not give the service provider the tools to make the customer journey perfect?
Signicat believes in supporting its clients. We supply our banking-grade authentication solution to many service providers who aim to both implement the best service possible and keep security watertight. By listening to our clients we have designed tools to improve the customer experience. Let’s look at two features we designed to help service providers implement the perfect customer journey.
# Anonymous ID – to reduce abandonment rate and takes you one step closer to a perfect customer journey
Companies spend a lot of money attracting customers—and yet, 63% of the customers abandon the onboarding process, particularly for financial services. The reason: the process is too complicated, and it takes too much time (2020 study: The Battle to Onboard 2020 by Signicat).
–63% of the customers abandon the onboarding process, particularly for financial services.
Sure, onboarding for regulated services takes time. It requires document capture, proofing, and a liveness check. Today, the process dictates that a customer onboards within a specific time to prevent service time-outs. Which is only achievable if the customer is ready to go, with all their documents and data present and nothing goes wrong. Why not be more forgiving to the customer, and grant them flexibility by removing the time pressure?
The customer should be able to stop the process at any time because they need a different document, need to move to better lighting conditions or—in the case of taking a video for a liveness check— is having a bad hair day. And when the customer wants to resume, they can continue where they left off.
It is this customer-centric thinking that shaped the Anonymous ID feature in Signicat's SCA solution. The SCA credentials for the Anonymous ID link the unidentified user to a mobile device. Crucially, this binding is performed at the beginning of the onboarding session, creating a unique link and guaranteeing that the Signicat SCA credentials are only used by the anonymous user that started the session. The onboarding session on the device can be stopped and restarted at any moment and the user returns at the point they dropped off. By making it possible to return to a session, abandonment rates and cost are both reduced.
# Recovery of Authentication Profiles – to get your customers back on your service in a blink
4 out of 10 smartphones are replaced every year (2020 – The Environmental Costs -And Benefits- of Our Cell Phones by Greenerchoice). Setting up a new device with the same apps is straightforward thanks to the cloud. Recovering the authentication profiles for financial, rental, merchant, and other secured apps is, however, time-consuming.
The behaviour of most authentication solutions, when a device is recovered from the cloud, is to re-onboard the customer. As a result, the customer goes through a new, time consuming, onboarding process. Authentication providers are not aware of the extra cost this has for the service provider. Therefore, some service providers have developed add-ons to facilitate authentication profile recovery, however, when the authentication provider upgrades its solutions, the add-ons need to be updated as well.
Signicat does it differently. Account Recovery features in Signicat's SCA solution make a seamless transfer of an authentication profile from one device to another possible. The service provider doesn’t need to go through the hassle of re-onboarding, meaning the customer is up and running again in a blink. Can you imagine the appreciation from your customers, when they can re-installing their banking app, rental app, or broker app using this feature?
After installing your secure service, including Signicat's SCA solution, for the first time, we ask the customer if they want to use a cloud backup service for the authentication profile. If yes, we ask the customer for a PIN, and Account Recovery is set. Then, at recovery, we remind the customer of the stored authentication profile. To restore, a strong customer authentication mechanism is used to put the profile back, and the customer has access to the secure service app again.
Signicat's SCA solution is one of the most complete authentication solutions available. Proven since 2006 and used over 1 billion times a year. What distinguishes Signicat from other providers is the drive to support clients on how to improve their mobile services—at the start of the engagement, at daily interactions, and if the service channel is disrupted.