Cognito Broadcast
Why Manual Review for Authentication Is Outdated
on July 23, 2021
Last year, many companies had to quickly adjust their customer authentication strategies to digital. Those with a system already in place were in a good spot. Those who didn’t had to catch up quickly — or fail. Manual authentication review is now outdated.
Although manual verification was once completely necessary, we now have the tools and customer verification solutions to do it remotely and automatically. But what’s pushing businesses to throw manual review out the window so fast? What makes it obsolete when compared to better alternatives?
In this blog we’ll answer these questions and more. We’ll also show you why you should be using a more effective, efficient alternative.
Human Resources Are Expensive
Cost is always one of the primary reasons that businesses implement a new process. Getting rid of manual verification is no different. The problem with manual verification is that in order to process everything in an efficient manner, you need a fairly large workforce. Running a human resources department this big can get exceedingly expensive.
When you remove the need for manual verification, your HR department can be much smaller and more efficient. Automating this process means that your HR department has room to breathe and actually focus on strategic work rather than spending their time doing arduous, tedious verification work.
Your human resources department will also spend much less time dealing with customer account access attempts and confusion with the onboarding process. Reducing costs in the HR department is just the beginning of the benefits you’ll see when you use an authentication solution instead of manual verification.
The Risk of Human Error Is Problematic
Compliance errors can be costly and difficult to resolve. When your verification process is manual, the chance of human error is greatly increased. When these tasks are automated, you reduce risk and save on unneeded compliance expenses.
With manual input, the question isn’t if an error will happen, the question is when. Eventually human errors will occur, and you’ll have to pay the price. When you automate these processes, you can virtually eliminate the human error factor.
Human error is a variable that can’t be controlled. The only certainty is that it will happen and then you’ll need to deal with it. When you remove this variable, you’ll save time, money and frustration for everyone.
The Time Required for Businesses Is Exorbitant
Remember how we said that you need a large workforce to stay efficient with manual verification? Well, what if you can’t afford a workforce of that size? If this is the case, your business will be pouring hours upon hours of time into the manual verification process.
Consider all of the factors that go into manual verification and how much time that takes away at every stage of the customer onboarding process.
When a customer needs to be verified:
- First they have to go through the process of providing the necessary verification resources.
- Next, they have to wait for your team to receive it. Your team likely already has a backlog of verifications to get through, which means that the customer will be waiting even longer than usual to get their verification to go through.
- When your team has the time, they have to go through the tedious process of making sure everything is in order. If anything is wrong, they have to notify the customer and the process starts all over again.
- Once all of the information is verified and correct, the customer can finally access their account and start using your product or service.
- This isn’t even considering re-screening and continuous monitoring for high-risk customers. In order to comply with KYC, your high-risk customers need to be monitored, and all of your customers should be regularly re-screened to assess any possible new risk factors. Add in the time required to do this manually, and the amount of time spent on KYC can be mind boggling.
In short, time is wasted and nobody is happy.
Your employees who are spending large chunks of their week on manual verification could be doing much better work. With verification automated, they’re able to spend time on billable and strategic work. Not only does this lead to a more efficient workforce, it leads to a happier one too.
The Time Required for Customers Is an Obstacle
When customers sign up for a product or service, they expect to be able to use it right away. With manual verification, this is impossible. Even if you are able to hone your manual verification process as much as possible, your customers will still be waiting.
With automatic verification, your customers don’t have to wait. They’ll be able to start using your services almost immediately. This alleviates a lot of the frustrations that customers may have during the sign-up process. And any time you can speed up the sign-up process, you also reduce churn. Losing customers during the sign-up process is the last thing you want to happen, so make sure you’re using a solution that can seamlessly get them through KYC while still being extremely secure.
There Are Better User Verification Solutions
There are much better verification solutions out there for your users. When you use Cognito, all of the pains of manual verification will be a thing of the past. Cognito is built to seamlessly integrate with your sign-up process while easily and quickly authenticating your new customers.
Cognito Flow will save you time, money and the frustrations that come with manual verification. Manual verification is no longer good enough for the modern business or the modern customer. Cognito is the solution to that.
With Cognito’s user verification solution, you can improve the customer experience, save time and money and have a happier workforce. If you want to see your business improve and make your customers happy, then give Cognito a try as your authentication solution. Give our team a call to learn more about Cognito and why it’s the best, most comprehensive authentication solution on the market.