How to optimize the verification of ID from thousands of users without third party provider

Context

On December 2019, HomeExchange and GuestToGuest platforms merged to create a unique website, brand, product and community. More than 400k members of HomeExchange can now exchange homes freely using one and only product.

Following this merge, it was our job to answer to member's questions and address their fears. We knew this period would be particularly intense for the support team.

Number of new Zendesk tickets everyday following the merge

A large part of these tickets represented verification requests : new members (coming from the data migration of old HomeExchange website) had to get their identity and home verified.

The way we handled it at the time : members had to send us an email with a proof of address and an ID through email, this would create a Zendesk ticket for support team. A support officer would open the ticket, see the the documents, then check in back-office if the informations would match, leading to the member becoming verified.

A verified member get a blue check next to his profile picture, prooving to the rest of the community he is a real person and that his house his real.

Problems

• Members do not feel confortable sending sensitive and private documents by email.
• The process to verify a member can be really time-consuming (handle multiple documents from all hover the world, handling cases where google maps doesn't know the address of the house...)
• Users often send only one of the two documents (either the ID or proof of address). In that case, support team officers have to reply to the member asking them to send another mail with the missing document.