Forgot Password Alternatives?

Question

Does anyone know of a good alternative to the Forgot Password link on login forms? I'm not looking to eliminate the link, but to provide an alternate method for retrieving lost passwords.

Our current process works like this: 1. User clicks on "Forgot your username or password?" link, which appears below the Username and Password fields on our login screen; 2. A panel opens below this link asking the user to provide her email address; 3. A reminder email is sent to the validated email address, which contains a reset link.

The trouble is that many users don't remember which email address they used to register. Entering an unrecognized email address will pop an error message. So, I was wondering if it might be helpful to ask for an email address or a phone number? If a recognized phone number were provided, a text message could be sent to the user's phone with the reset link.

This alternative might help reduce the number of calls our customer service reps have to answer each day about lost passwords. But I haven't seen this phone/email pattern used before.

Any thoughts, pro or con?

Answer 1

I think you would be able to do this. In fact twilio can handle the reset password by voice if they don't have text.

Answer 2

I think it depends on which user information your company collects from the users. Do you collect account recovery questions or alternate email addresses? You could for example ask for the alternate address and if there is a match ask for more information; for example, expose the last digits of the phone number and ask to provide the rest. Unfortunately our technology world didn't come up with the ideal identity solution yet. For the customer service reps, I would recommend giving them a quick ability to reset user's password. Usually service reps cannot know the new password or ask users for passwords so an auto generated reset password link can be sent to the user's email.