When the Customer Isn't Right: Protect Your Business from Fraud

By Wendy Roth, Education Manager —

For some companies, going to great lengths to satisfy customers is the stuff legends are made of. I'm sure you've heard of the department store that accepts the return of a shirt that is not only old and worn, but that wasn't even sold at the store. When every negative tweet can grow to be a PR disaster, it can seem easier to just give in and say the customer is always right.

But what if the customer isn't right? Or isn't even a customer, for that matter? In the old days, thieves had to actually go to the bank because that's where the money was. But nowadays, they can steal money from your business without even leaving their living rooms.

So how do you distinguish semi-legitimate customers with a shirt to return from the real thieves? Here's how three businesses used Tealeaf to identify and limit fraud on their websites:

Understand Fraud Patterns
A major bank had identified IP addresses they knew were attempting fraudulent activity. The question they wanted to answer is what were these fraudsters doing or trying to do? Their analytics tools helped them to figure out that fraudulent attempts were taking place but they didn’t know how.

By using Tealeaf replay, the bank was able to see both the fraudulent behavior and to identify patterns that characterized fraud. They could then use those patterns to identify other, previously unknown offending IP addresses and discover other impacted accounts.

As a result, the fraud group saw significant improvement in fraud containment. Adding Tealeaf to all web applications has become mission-critical due to the additional intelligence that Tealeaf provides the fraud group.

Verify Discrepancies
When it comes time to plan a vacation, a few customers of a prominent online travel company thought that good prices were not quite good enough. These customers would call in and complain that the rate they were charged didn't match what was displayed on the website.

Before Tealeaf, when a customer called in with a dispute the customer service representative (CSR) had to take the customer's word, and as a result, the company lost thousands of dollars a day in credits or refunds.

By giving their CSRs access to Tealeaf, for the first time, the travel company could investigate what the customer actually saw and did at the time of booking, and see how far reality might have strayed from the customer's account of the transaction. Armed with the facts, the CSR could choose to approve or deny refunds on a case-by-case basis, saving thousands daily.

Identify Fraud in Real-time
A financial services company couldn't wait for forensics to reveal possible evidence of fraud after the perpetrators had come and gone; they wanted to be alerted while it was occurring. So they used Tealeaf Events to pull data from forms users submitted and compared that data to previous loan applications and fraud watch lists. As a result, they saw a significant improvement in their ability to detect fraud. In addition, they were able to identify other site issues and determine their causes.

With the rapid growth of online business channels—including mobile—the stakes continue to rise. By being vigilant and leveraging fraud detection and dispute resolution solutions such as Tealeaf cxVerify, you won't lose your shirt keeping your real customers satisfied.