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In A Trustless World, A New Software Platform and Network Aims to Broker Confidence Between Customers and Brands Leveraging 'Zero Knowledge'

By Arti Loftus June 24, 2020

At a time when cybersecurity companies are rolling out zero trust offerings, to ensure only those people and machines who are fully authorized and authenticated can access networks and services, a company based in Denver, Colorado is looking to solve digital identity challenges with an approach they are calling a “Zero Knowledge” network-based approach.

What makes Journey’s new solution, which has come out of stealth mode after over two years of R&D, testing and integration disruptive is how their solution engages and empowers customers, giving them the intuitive tools they need to orchestrate their own “journey” with the brands and organizations they wish to interact with. They now have 14 patents-pending for this fundamentally new approach to solving for the frustrating challenge of proving identity digitally.

Calling this “the first and only platform that solves for privacy, security, and customer experience simultaneously, which unlocks huge improvements in customer satisfaction, fraud prevention, and major operational and cost efficiencies for businesses,” the developers at Journey have based the cloud-based solution on a cryptographic concept called Zero Knowledge, which allows an individual to prove something to be true without revealing the details.

What makes their solution valuable to those brands who are seeking to build trust and loyalty is the simplicity of the solution for both their customers and the agents who serve them, with a patent-pending technique leveraging the customer’s smartphone and the existing enterprise mobile app to make it possible to “request, verify, and share sensitive details, from a Social Security Number to a credit card payment, with the agent only ever seeing a pass/fail on their screen.”

Because no sensitive personal information ever travels to or is seen by an agent or the contact center infrastructure, the customer’s data and privacy is highly protected. In addition, the enterprise saves millions on fraud prevention, regulatory compliance and time previously wasted on establishing identity through traditional means, which made calls longer and frustrating than ever, and which proved to be less secure than originally thought.

The recent tectonic shift of contact center agents to Work From Home (WFH) models has accelerated the demand for solutions which automate more processes while ensuring the security of every session, especially given reports on thousands of adversarial attacks from cyber criminals who have identified vulnerabilities associated with virtual working.

In a statement Journey said, “With over 1 million contact center agents now working from home in the U.S., the need for Zero Knowledge has dramatically increased with agents now hearing credit card and health data while sitting at their kitchen tables. Journey’s solution eliminates that risk and cuts at least one minute out of the average call, but this varies significantly depending on the type of interaction. For example, a new account creation at a financial institution can take days or weeks with significant back and forth. By contrast, Journey’s solution enables that same account to be opened in less than 5 minutes because the platform and Zero Knowledge network enable identity verification, document verification, digital signatures, and payment processing all in the same interaction.”

“Verified identity is at the core of a Trusted Digital Relationship between a business and their customers, yet it has been for the most part, a broken process,” said Journey CEO Brett Shockley. “Companies waste a customer’s time with a lot of silly questions that provide little security, broadly expose their data to contact center agents, copy their data into databases that are honeypots for hackers, and spend millions of dollars on a patchwork quilt of technology and process Band-Aids.”

Shockley continued to explain that the company “took a step back and fundamentally rethought the approach, inventing a Zero Knowledge network solution that cares for a customer’s information while making it simple to use it to deliver a highly personalized and streamlined customer experience throughout the customer journey lifecycle.”

Journey’s “customer lifecycle” point above is important because one of the things that makes Journey’s trusted identity solution is that it can be leveraged in dozens of ways to improve customer experience throughout many types of engagements with customers. Trusted identity has obvious implications for inbound contact center calls and outbound calling campaigns, but trusted identity is an enormously powerful tool that can be leveraged creatively by businesses to reduce friction on customers in dozens and dozens of ways.

Far beyond a straightforward authentication tool, verified identity can make huge improvements in workforce automation, privacy-preserving personalization, secure meetings, privacy-protected telehealth, seamless travel experiences, fast and secure purchasing processes and more. Eventus, one of Journey’s top partners has consulting and managed services capabilities that can help enterprises leverage secure digital identity to drive personalization and more.

The company published statistics based on their year of development and testing, with partners and direct clients, noting:

  • 99.98% reduction in synthetic fraud, upending hacker economics
  • Saving 30 - 120 seconds per call
  • Saving at least $1 per call
  • Increasing outbound right-party connect rates by up to 10x
  • Enabling secure work from anywhere agents allowing flexible staffing models proven to increase retention rates
  • Easy integration with existing identity, payment & transaction tools

They also estimated all-in savings on compliance, fraud, time, and operational efficiency at a savings up to $25,000 per agent, per year.

Enterprise Connect recently named Journey’s Trusted Identity Platform the winner of its Best of Enterprise Connect and Best Innovation in Customer Experience awards, which recognize major innovations that will have a significant impact on customer service and experience.

Journey has strong market traction already, with over a dozen top Contact Center platform, integrator, reseller and technology partners successfully selling Journey’s Identity solutions into customers in financial services, business process outsourcing, retail and more.

Those partners include Avaya, Acqueon, CBA, CCT, Cisco, Customer Dynamics, Eventus, New Era Technologies, OneStream Networks Princeton Hosted, and more.


Arti Loftus is an experienced Information Technology specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the research, writing, and editing industry with many published articles under her belt.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
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