More Than a Quarter of Americans Who Choose Not to Use Online Enrollment in Government Benefits Programs Say the Process Looks Too Difficult - Seite 2

“The Biden administration is focused on reducing the time tax that discourages and prohibits so many people from accessing services—and the process for proving identity is a great area of opportunity for improvement,” said Huth. “Fortunately, there are robust tools that improve the customer experience while reducing risks for fraud.”

Among several recommendations, the report notes a multipronged approach is most effective. Such an approach includes device reputation tracking, device fingerprinting, device-to-identity linkages and user-behavior analysis. TransUnion TruValidate line of solutions incorporates these identity and device proofing technologies and more to catch fraudsters early while reducing friction for legitimate benefits applicants, claimants and recipients.

Call centers still important
When seeking information about benefits programs, the report found 60% of constituents will call an agency, while just slightly more will visit the official website (61%). However, when responding to unexpected communication via postal mail, two-thirds (66%) will call the agency, while less than half (47%) will visit the website.

In addition, when constituents run into problems while completing an online application, they are equally likely to call the agency for help as they are to use a digital channel, like the website chat function. These findings highlight the importance of a consistent omnichannel experience and should encourage agencies to invest in their call centers.

Pre-answer inbound call authentication and risk assessment technology, based on forensic phone intelligence, allows applicants and recipients to seamlessly utilize both call center channels without the risk of being inconvenienced by unnecessary friction.

“The first few minutes of a call set the tone for the entire constituent experience. That time should be spent serving their needs rather than interrogating their identity,” said Jason Lord, vice president of TransUnion’s global fraud solutions.

TruValidate Inbound Authentication solutions help call centers reduce reliance on costly and time-consuming knowledge-based authentication while focusing fraud resources on only the minority of risky calls. These solutions reduce average call handle times, increase Interactive Voice Response containment, and improve the caller experience.

For full details on the research findings, read the report “Reduce Benefit Enrollment Burdens.”

About the survey
TransUnion partnered with Dynata to conduct a nationwide survey of 1,006 adults living in the United States (incl. territories) who said they had previously applied for government benefits and/or plan to do so in the next 3 years, randomly selected from a broad data panel. This survey administered via the Qualtrics platform, and all responses were anonymized prior to analysis. Standard R & Python libraries were used to facilitate data ingest, cleanup and analysis.