The Ease of Passwordless Authentication

Gather’s one-click authentication increases conversion and decreases support time by removing needless points of friction.

The Ease of Passwordless Authentication

Overview

Passwords and usernames can be a drag. While designed for security, they can create  unnecessary friction.  Maybe more importantly, they’re often  forgotten. In fact, more than 50% of calls to museum help desks and membership offices are for password resets and username recovery. That’s both a lot of calls and a lot of staff time that could be more meaningfully spent. Gartner estimates that each forgotten username or password reset or can typically take between 2-30 minutes for a fix.

The Challenge

Every museum wants to balance security with user experience, but that’s easier said than done. A large science museum, for example, was frustrated with its online visitor experience. When purchasing a membership or ticket, making a donation, or registering for a program, its users needed to navigate a minimum of 8 screens to complete a single transaction–with almost half of those screens related to authentication.

Unsurprisingly, nearly 40% of users abandoned the process midstream, resorting instead to emailing or phoning the museum, or simply giving up. As the Director of Development explained, “We were losing donors and prospects, frustrating  members and guests, and spending a significant amount of valuable staff time just to help someone complete what should be a simple transaction.”  This is an expensive problem for every organization, but especially for those with limited staff resources.  Forrester Research estimates that the average labor cost of a single password reset is about $70.

The Solution

With Gather’s seamless authentication experience, museums are able to maintain security while speeding access to the things that are really important–membership renewal, donations, and event registration–without the need to remember or enter a username or password. In addition, once authenticated, users are immediately logged in on subsequent visits. Eliminating user frustration while saving institutional time is a win-win for everyone.

The Results

  • 90% reduction in staff support resources
  • 30% more leads captured
  • 24% increase in revenue from paid programming
“The amount of calls and emails from members and guests since we started using Gather has dropped by 90%.  Our visitors are having a more seamless experience and our staff can focus time on more important activities.” -Director of Membership

Read the full case study here.

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