How to use CAPTCHA in a conversational interface?

In today's digital world, robust authentication mechanisms are an absolute necessity. With the increase in cybercrime, it is essential to protect personal and sensitive information. As stated in the last OWASP 2023 Top 10 Vulnerabilities report, authentication mechanisms are the first line of defence against unauthorized access to online accounts. Furthermore, the new ISO 27001:2022 certification standard dedicates specific controls and clauses to ensure secure authentication procedures.

A robust authentication mechanism is the key to unlocking a great number of self-services. For example, making financial operations, changing insurance policy details or consulting medical test results are operations that individuals can perform online if they pass a strong authentication screening.

However, there are situations where robust authentication mechanisms are not possible. This is the case of quote&buy journeys, where customers are not registered and identified apriori, but also when agents and advisers are about to request some actions on behalf of their clients.

In such cases, the list of self-serve services experiments a physiological reduction because some critical actions won’t be accessible to an unidentified user. Reducing the risk of robots and Denial of Services attacks is also important by using additional security measures like CAPTCHA codes and other techniques.

CAPTCHAs, in particular, are a popular security measure used to prevent automated attacks by requiring users to prove they are human and they nicely fit conversational interfaces. A handy-style text over a noisy background is generated and displayed to the user as an image. Automated Optical Character Recognition (OCR) detectors won’t be able to easily guess the keyword by reading the image.

The main three requirements for a good CAPTCHA code generator are:

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Highlights from the Bupa Blue Table Demo Day

1 min read

Last week, we saw the incredible work of all those involved in the Blue Table programme, organised by Bupa Customer Lab and L Marks, come to life. From within a theatre inside the British Film Institute, Spixii presented the results of the last 10 weeks. Here are the highlights!

Bupa Blue Table x Spixii

Spixii worked closely with multiple teams at Bupa to design a healthcare chatbot, automating their existing form and allowing users ask questions about their policy. It connected with Bupa's backend systems and front-end website in just over 10 weeks: the quickest integration to date, and one Richard Cohen, actuary at the Customer Lab, called 'phenomenal':

We refined the conversation to the requirements of the legal and compliance teams, whilst starting from a fresh approach. Historically, Bupa's digital team have tailored their existing journey and fine-tuned it to see what works and what doesn't. Now, we've completely pulled away from that and asked, 'How do you (the customer) want the conversation to be structured? I really do see the future of this conversation as having a dialogue with the customer. So let's start a conversation with our customers.

D50_4688-minRichard Cohen, Actuary at the Customer Lab

 

The importance of creating structured digital customer experiences

For quote-and-buy use-cases, the conversation must be highly structured so that it can be easily audited. For James Oughton from the Customer Lab, "the auditable structured chatbot technology met our compliance and legal requirements during the trial and has been straightforward to integrate".

Adding the human touch

When dealing with a complex area such as claims, there will always be an option to talk to a human. There'll be a phone number clearly on display and if the chatbot senses the customer's need to talk to a human, the avatar will change and offer the possibility to move to a live chat with an agent. The potential for seamless conversation across different channels now becomes a possibility.

D50_4671-min

On the benefits of customer service

A large proportion of customer conversations take a decision-tree style. These questions can easily be automated using the chatbot and moved to a human once they get more specific. This also frees up the customer service team's time and resources. As a customer, once you make the switch from chatbot to human, everything you say will be passed on so there's no need to repeat the same information.

 

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