Anon.com is a new customer authentication product that lets customer support agents authenticate customers faster and more securely via text, chat, or phone.
The importance of customer authentication
- Almost every customer support interaction, whether it's via phone, text, or chat, starts with customer authentication. The agent must verify the customer's identity and ensure that they are authorized to access their account. This authentication is crucial as it prevents fraud, especially in industries that handle payments or sensitive data, such as banking, healthcare, and retail.
- Customer authentication is a necessary but often problematic process for customer support firms and their clients. Larger companies have developed internal tools, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) or one-time passwords (OTP), to streamline this process. However, the vast majority of companies rely on some form of knowledge-based authentication (KBA).
- This document outlines the issues with the current KBA-based approach and explains how technology being developed by Anon.com can make authentication easier, faster, and more secure for customer support teams.
How Authentication is done today
- For years, companies have relied on KBA (Knowledge-Based Authentication) to confirm the identity of a given consumer. The process generally involves answering a few questions based on information obtained from the backend system such as “When was your last order?” or from a list of security questions answered upon signup like "What was the make and model of your first car?" KBA operates on the assumption that someone's identity can be considered verified if they are able to accurately respond to these questions.
The Anon.com Authentication Approach
- Instead of starting with KBA, Anon.com creates custom authentication links that customer support agents can send to customers. This enables any customer with a username and password to bypass lengthy KBA processes, saving time and improving the user experience.
The “Delta Airlines approach”, for everyone
- This approach might seem familiar because companies with large support functions, like airlines and banks, have built custom software to enable this type of “login-first” approach to authentication. Below is a screenshot from Delta Airlines current in-app login.
- Anon.com enables anyone to replicate the authentication flow created by Delta Airlines without the need for an expensive technical integration.
Benefits of the Anon.com approach for Horatio and its customers
- 💵 Reduce CX rep time on authentication, by reducing back-and-forth between CX and customers, as well as reducing issues when good customers fail KBA.
- 🔒 Improve security by incorporating the 2FA that is already in your login flow, and reducing personal data available to CX reps, such as mother’s maiden name.
- 🛡️ Reduce fraud by taking the subjective decision-making out of the hands of the CX rep, so fraudsters can’t social engineer their way into an account.
- 🤖 Enable easy AI adoption either now or in the future by taking the CX rep out of authentication, allowing automation of authentication for support channels.
Next Steps
- We would love to chat with anyone at Horatio, as well as any of Horatio’s customers, to explore if Anon.com could partner to improve operations or end-user experience for customer support teams today!
Learn more
Contact us at dm@anon.com to set up a meeting to learn more about our business.
Appendix
More Info About Anon.com
What is Anon.com?
Anon.com is an early-stage technology company building an access management solution that enables identities to be securely shared with granular controls.
Our vision is to create a more secure identity layer that connects users and companies. This layer will help businesses to improve security and access control within existing processes.
The Anon.com Team
Anon.com is a 7-person team based in Los Angeles, CA.
The company was founded by three co-founders: Daniel, Peter, and Kai with deep background building companies in the security, AI, and financial services sectors. Collectively we have raised >$100mm for past companies, and have raised $2mm to-date for Anon.com, with more financing closing in the coming months.
The remainder of the team is heavily technical and product-oriented, with 2 software engineers with backgrounds at Amazon, Meta, and Stability AI, and 2 product/design-focused team members both from Cash App / Square.
Daniel Mason
CEO
- Previously was Partner at Framework Ventures, a $1.1B venture capital fund based in San Francisco.
- Before that co-founded Spring Labs, a security startup with $68mm in funding that provides security solutions to large institutions like TransUnion, GM Financial, Amount, and more.
Peter Nesbitt
President/COO
- Previously COO at TeamPay, a $175mm payments startup based in New York.
- Before that served on the executive team at Bit.ly, worked in Private Equity at Carlyle Group, and served as an Intelligence Officer in the US Army.
Kai Aichholz
CTO
- Previously was Chief Technology and HIPAA Security Officer at Alaffia, a Series A AI/ML Healthtech startup in New York.
- Before that worked in engineering at Goldman Sachs and Amazon after graduating from MIT.