Enterprise WebRTC call center for banking and finance with Restcomm

Enterprise WebRTC call center for banking and finance has been a common use case for Restcomm in 2015. Several factors highlight this trend:

• Ability to connect securely via popular desktop browsers instead of a dedicated office phone device
• Securely connecting customers and agents on the go from within enterprise smart phone apps
• Utilizing the phone number to manage user identity
• Cyber security and client privacy protection laws which require financial institutions to run within a controlled private cloud environment.

Let’s briefly review why Restcomm has been a popular choice for the outlined requirements.

Key Restcomm features for enterprise WebRTC call centers

Restcomm provides several components that make it a good fit for modern banking and finance call centers.

On the server side:

• Restcomm is capable of running in any virtualized private cloud environment that can host a Java VM
• The Restcomm server is capable of connecting to PSTN (SS7), VoIP (SIP) and WebRTC end points. This allows Restcomm to extend existing enterprise telephony infrastructure and preserving prior investments. Restcomm integrates readily with Cisco Unified Communications (UC) Server, Avaya Aura and Microsoft Lync.
• Rich REST/JSON API that makes it easy for server side developers to integrate with the IT assets without specialized telecom skills. The API is compatible with the popular Twilio API.
• Ability to scale automatically on demand (with Ubuntu JuJu and docker)
• Fully featured IVR, conferencing and messaging capabilities

The diagram below illustrates the high-level elements that interact in an enterprise WebRTC call center.

Next, I would like to draw attention to an exciting opportunity with high value potential in the industry.

The phone number is a powerful identify management factor

The multi-factor authentication market (MFA) is estimated to grow to $10.75B by 2020 according to Markets and Markets research. 90% of that will be attributed to two-factor authentication. By far the most popular second authentication factor is phone number verification. Hugely popular consumer apps from WhatsApp and Twitter to Google have set a trend that has extended to a number of niche applications. The most common enterprise user of two-factor authentication is the finance industry.

While the phone number has become a popular authentication token, its potential for identity management has remained largely untapped. WebRTC application vendors continue to rely on traditional web methods for authentication with user name and password. This of course has been working just fine, except it doesn’t take advantage of what could be a better user experience. In a services economy its all about the user experience.

Let’s illustrate the advantage of the phone number with an example. Let’s say that Charlie uses a banking app from (hypothetical) CapitalBank for iPhone to check his account balance, to pay bills and message his personal banker. Now let’s assume that CapitalBank has verified Charlie’s mobile phone number and instead of asking for a long user name and password entry each time Charlie opens the app, which can be very annoying on a tiny keyboard without visual feedback when password characters are hidden, the app simply asks Charlie for a short four digit PIN. The PIN may not be even required if Charlie locks his phone with his fingerprint or PIN. Replacing the need to enter 20-30 symbols, half of which are hidden, with a quick 4 digit PIN or biometric scan is quite a bit of improvement for Charlie, who uses his banking app several times a week.