When it comes to solutions for fraud case management, merchants often think a standalone case management tool is equivalent to the client portal an outsourced fraud prevention partner provides.
Both help fight fraud, but they aren’t an apples-to-apples comparison.
Admittedly, a typical case management tool does provide a wealth of data about transactions that can help identify potential fraud.
However, data does not equal decisions.
Providers of case management tools assume you have a full staff of dedicated fraud analysts with extensive industry knowledge to analyze the data they provide, conduct additional research as needed, and ultimately make a fraud determination.
But without industry experience, a global view of the ecommerce market, and up-to-date knowledge of the latest fraudster tactics, merchants using a standalone case management tool end up spending time investigating fraud that would be better spent selling. Additionally (and more dangerously), these merchants risk using their case management tool correctly – which means they may be making poor decisions about fraud.
To determine what case management solution will best help you identify and manage ecommerce fraud, it’s important to consider four key questions.
Let’s examine each of those questions in detail.
Human analysis is a crucial part of the fraud prevention process. Ecommerce merchants who combine the technology of an automated ecommerce dashboard with specialized expert analysis have greater success in accurately evaluating transactions. But without industry-specific knowledge and the context that comes from experience, that manual analysis can take a considerable amount of time … and still might not yield a definitive answer.
Adding even more complexity is the fact that fraudsters use patterns across multiple merchants to execute their fraud. Rarely, if ever, do we see merchants work together to determine if they are all experiencing the same type of fraud, understandably due to concerns about competition and privacy issues. However, this also means most merchants can’t recognize when they are one of many sites victimized by the same fraudster using a similar fraud pattern.
While standalone fraud case management solutions offer ecommerce merchants technology to support fraud-related decision-making, these solutions don’t provide guidance on how to review and analyze the data, let alone make a decision. That’s where merchants risk spending too much time on fraud prevention … and not enough time selling.
Like a standalone solution, ClearSale’s ecommerce dashboard also gives merchants a view of the transactions being processed and those being questioned. The difference is that rather than simply supporting the decision-making process, we take ownership of it by removing the burden of analysis.
Our industry analysts not only have the experience to quickly recognize the most common types of fraud, they have access to our unique transaction database to spot fraudulent patterns across ecommerce sites. When a fraudster is using a similar transaction pattern on separate ecommerce sites, we can easily identify those transactions without having to divulge private information between merchants.
Merchants get the answers they need – to approve or decline a transaction – plus the data to support that decision via our client portal. Ultimately, approval decisions are still always made by the merchant, but rather than investing countless hours and significant guesswork, our merchants can rely on industry expertise and an ecommerce dashboard that visualizes why each decision is recommended.
Read the iDrinkCoffee success story to learn how ClearSale helps clients spend more time selling and less time investigating fraud.
One common misconception about the fraud prevention industry is that fraud analysis is a function of customer service. Some merchants even rely on third-party call centers to make decisions about fraudulent transactions. This often results in subpar results, as untrained customer service reps do not have the necessary judgment and analysis gained from years of expertise.
For example, untrained reps or merchants often make the mistake of assuming that different shipping and billing addresses is an easy sign of fraud. Granted, fraudsters may want to use a shipping address that’s different from the billing address, but so do many good customers – such as when a customer is travelling or sending a gift. Merchants who automatically decline transactions based on these simple rules run a significant risk of declining valid transactions.
Even merchants who rely on a case management tool need to have fraud expertise to train the artificial intelligence (AI) in those tools to accurately detect fraud.
Speaking of training, there is a significant challenge when it comes to hiring and training an in-house fraud analyst team: scaling.
It’s critical to make sure your team is staffed appropriately during times of high traffic when sales spike, such as during the holiday season and sales events. But that can be much easier said than done: How can you feasibly hire and train analysts to handle peak times, and then let them go (and hope they don’t find another job) during slow times?
At ClearSale, fraud analysts undergo three months of training before they look at a single transaction. This training is critical to developing the investigative mindset and knowledge required for accurate fraud analysis. And because we have such a large pool of expertise, merchants can easily rely on us during peak times, rather than trying to quickly hire, train, and manage a bunch of unseasoned analysts.
However, that doesn’t mean your team won’t improve their fraud analysis skills when working with us. ClearSale’s in-house consulting team can help merchants train fraud analysts, while providing much-needed support when transaction volumes become overwhelming.
Read the RVPartShop success story to learn how ClearSale helps clients identify hard-to-spot fraud.
This sounds like a silly question, but it’s actually quite serious. Merchants who don’t have the expertise to analyze transaction data, whether in a case management tool or other software, risk losing customers and their business due to increased false declines and chargebacks. Let’s take a quick look at these risks:
False declines happen when a valid customer transaction is declined for suspicion of fraud. Usually, it’s because the merchant didn’t have enough information to make an informed decision, or because they created AI rules that were too restrictive.
The impact of false declines has become more evident and is creating serious concerns for merchants, payment processors, and fraud prevention solution providers:
Losing customers is never a good thing, but when you’re a merchant that sells high-dollar items, the loss of just one customer plus all of their friends on social media can be devastating.
Chargebacks are the fees a credit card processor passes along to merchants when a customer disputes a transaction. While chargebacks can happen for legitimate reasons – such as when the customer never receives an item or the item isn’t what they were expecting – chargeback fraud continues to plague the ecommerce industry.
When merchants are unable to distinguish between fraudulent and valid transactions using the data points on their case management tool, they will likely experience higher chargeback rates without understanding why. If those chargeback rates exceed the threshold set by the merchant’s payment processor, they may be subject to additional fees and monitoring programs and may eventually be denied services by the processor until proper fraud protection is in place.
ClearSale offers merchants more than just an ecommerce dashboard, by integrating technology with critical expertise and knowledge about the latest fraud trends. By working with a recognized fraud prevention partner, merchants demonstrate to their payment processors they take fraud seriously.
Read the ASUS success story to learn how ClearSale helps clients reduce fraud without turning away good customers.
Fraud case management tools offer much information and details about individual transactions because they are meant for trained, experienced fraud analysts to use. They are not designed for merchants with small in-house teams who might lack the same level of fraud experience.
It’s true that a good case management dashboard will provide an overview of the most important KPIs related to fraud, including:
Dashboards might also allow merchants to search for data on individual orders as well.
However, all of this information is provided with the assumption that the merchant’s in-house team will use this information to make the decision on each transaction. It’s also up to the merchant to monitor the KPIs on the dashboard to make sure performance stays within acceptable ranges. Should too many fraud decisions be made incorrectly, the merchant’s KPIs will trend negatively – which can hurt the merchant’s business relationships with customers, payment processors, and more, as explained in the sections above.
At ClearSale, we have specifically designed our fraud management dashboard to provide information that every merchant management team needs – both to ensure the management team understands why ClearSale makes each approve/decline decision recommendation, and also to enable the management team to monitor the company’s fraud KPIs to ensure performance always stays within acceptable benchmarks.
Read the PhoneDaddy success story to learn how ClearSale helps clients manage a high volume of transactions without false declines or chargebacks.
Merchants who work with ClearSale gain the significant advantages of a team of experienced fraud analysts, an intuitive and comprehensive fraud dashboard, and an unparalleled industry-wide database that allows us to quickly detect fraudulent transactions, recommend a decision for each questionable transaction, and empower merchants to grow their revenue and better manage their business.
Learn more about how we’ve helped clients around the world fight fraud and generate more business. See how our ecommerce fraud protection and fraud prevention solution works.