“Who is this?” shouldn’t be the slowest—or riskiest—part of the call.
Every call starts with identity. The speed, accuracy, and security of caller authentication determines everything that follows: handle time, fraud risk, containment, and customer trust. Journey replaces knowledge-based questions and complex voice biometrics programs with fast, deterministic, privacy-forward authentication—powered by passkeys and OTP.
The industry’s defaults are failing—on CX, security, or both.
Approach 1
Knowledge-based Authentication (KBA)
What it looks like:
“Mother’s maiden name,” “favorite pizza,” or dynamic questions from third-party data sources.
Limitations:
- Poor customer experience and high failure rates
- Privacy: customers must speak sensitive details out loud
- Difficult to use reliably in self-service
- Easily exploited with breached data and social engineering
Approach 2
Voice
Biometrics
What it looks like:
Enroll a voiceprint and match future calls to it.
Limitations:
- Complex and expensive deployments
- Probabilistic outcomes (“high confidence match”) vs deterministic proof
- Evolving regulatory requirements and consent considerations
- Increasing pressure from synthetic voice and deepfake-driven impersonation
Journey’s Approach
Deterministic caller authentication with passkeys + OTP.
Journey upgrades caller authentication by using the customer’s smartphone to prove identity—without requiring the customer to reveal secrets to an agent or bot. Most organizations deploy both: Passkeys for highest assurance and best experience, OTP for broad coverage and flexibility.
Best
Passkeys
- Customer authenticates with familiar device biometrics (Face ID / Touch ID / Windows Hello)
- Biometrics stay on the device; what’s exchanged is a signed assertion/certificate
- Fast, low training, and privacy-forward
Universal + Fast
OTP
- Proof-of-possession of a device associated with the registered number
- Extremely fast to deploy and adopt
- Commonly used as step-up or fallback when passkeys aren’t available
One authentication layer across every channel.
Self-service (IVR/IVA or AI)
- Trigger verification
- Customer authenticates on mobile
- Workflow returns verified result
- Containment improves without exposing sensitive inputs
Agent-assisted
- Agent clicks to send passkey/OTP step-up
- Verified result returns instantly
- Less interrogation, less handle time, stronger verification
Agentic AI
- AI can orchestrate the flow safely by invoking authentication tools and receiving results—without holding sensitive identity data in model context
Where callers authenticate (and where fraud tries hardest).
- Account access and verification at call start
- Step-up authentication for high-risk actions (address changes, disbursements, profile updates)
- Password reset and account recovery
- Approving transactions and authorizations
- Collections and payment arrangements
- Moving from informational to transactional intents in self-service
Faster calls. Better containment. Lower fraud exposure.
- Shorter authentication steps and faster time-to-resolution
- Reduced reliance on knowledge-based interrogation
- A clearer, more privacy-forward posture than sharing secrets out loud
- Stronger path to scaling self-service and AI safely
Get Started
Want authentication that’s faster than KBA—and simpler than voice biometrics?
We’ll demo passkeys + OTP in your environment and map where step-up verification should occur across self-service, agent-assisted, and AI workflows.
