The Customer Is King, Now More Than Ever

In A Decade of Digital Transformation in 12 Months, 46 C-suite executives spoke with PYMNTS for its Q2 eBook on what the world will look like as recovery rolls on and the next iteration of normal rolls out. In this excerpt, Jack Alton, CEO of Neuro-ID, discusses the importance of distinguishing legitimate customers from fraudsters—and delivering a friction-free experience to ensure success for banks and merchants alike.

Read the entire eBook here.

Imagine walking into a store with the money and intention to buy a product or service. Then, a suspicious associate treats you like a criminal and asks you to leave. They are just following policy, of course, whatever that may be – but nonetheless, you are now gone, and the likelihood of ever going back to that store is slim. Seems outrageous, right? And yet, according to a recent Aite Group study, nearly $450 billion will be lost to digital companies by declining good, genuine customers – a number that is 70 times greater than projected fraud losses in eCommerce for 2021.

Even more damaging, the Sapio Research Survey published in March of last year reports that “33 percent of all customers falsely declined will never return to that site.”

As the digital shift of 2020 took effect and millions of current and new consumers looked to online channels for their everyday needs, one thing became more and more clear: The customer is still king. And with so many choices online for consumers to choose from, their experience is more important than ever.

Unfortunately, over the past couple of decades, including the last 12 months of hypergrowth, during digital transformation, many of the human elements of everyday communication have been lost. This has been called a “digital gap,” making understanding customers’ intentions across digital channels very challenging.

Understanding whether a visitor is a shopper or buyer, a criminal or a genuine customer, is critical to maximizing revenue and lifetime value as well as reducing fraud losses. Today, however, using current fraud stacks and CX methods, most companies fall short in truly comprehending the intentions of their customers, and therefore send away literally millions of legitimate customers, many to a competitor.

Fortunately, the digital body language of each visitor can be captured through their behavioral signals. These data come from every tap, type and swipe interaction the customer has with a website, form or application. This digital footprint provides deep insight into the intentions and experience of each user. For instance, behavioral data can reveal whether a user is familiar with the information they are inputting.

Familiarity would be expected from a genuine customer. They know their name, address, email, mobile number, etc., and can fill it in without much thought or hesitation. The same information provided by someone not familiar with it, like a fraudster, would be easily detected through their behavioral signals and interactions.

Detecting genuine versus fraudulent users can go a long way toward treating customers like, well, customers – and reducing the false positive rates experienced by so many companies. Through behavioral data and analysis, legitimate customers can complete their journey through the site, form or checkout process, increasing satisfaction rates and overall conversion, the ultimate goal of any online institution.

Today more than ever before, the customer is truly king. Detecting genuine customers and helping them complete a friction-free experience will certainly bring today’s financial institutions (Fis) and eCommerce businesses the ROI they’re looking for.