Ecommerce professionals have been on a two-week, COVID-19-induced sprint of agile thinking, business-continuity executing, contingency planning, budget adjusting, workforce distributing — all while building a new organization for a new and uncertain time.
Those in the retail industry know something about resourcefulness, pivoting and remaining calm in the face of business challenges. But it’s safe to say that no one in the business has ever seen anything like what we’re facing today.
Signifyd recognizes the unprecedented times we’re in and is responding by providing a new bundle of free tools and deeply discounted services that gives new clients what they need to keep their businesses operating at a high-level under trying circumstances.
- Disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic have retailers fighting a three-pronged battle to keep their businesses functioning at a high-level: a remote workforce’s limited equipment and capabilities, complications with protecting personally identifiable information, spikes in order volumes and orders for certain products.
- Planning for business continuity might be overmatched by the extent of the upheaval brought on by the global spread of the coronavirus and the necessary government orders that most workers stay home.
- Signifyd has developed a bundle of free tools and discounted services that are aimed at getting retailers back to operational speed despite the current complications.
Signifyd’s COVID-19 Business Continuity Package offers retailers an effective and fully scalable way to manage orders that they would ordinarily send to manual fraud review teams. It also provides free access to Signifyd’s Agent Console and Insights Dashboard — two elements of the company’s Commerce Protection Platform, which equip users with risk scoring on all transactions and real-time analytics of ecommerce trends and industry performance benchmarks.
“Consumer compassion is at the core of every decision we make,” Signifyd CEO and Co-Founder Raj Ramanand said. “We are all finding our way in this unprecedented time. We will all get through this together and we wanted to find a way to make that path easier for retailers.”
The Business Continuity Package can help retailers find their operational footing
The Business Continuity Package can provide insights and fraud protection immediately, as retailers can take advantage of it without Signifyd executing a technical integration.
Retail operations, like every industry’s operations, have been turned upside down by the quickly spreading coronavirus and the efforts to stop the spread. Government shelter-at-home orders, the need to close physical stores, supply chain disruptions and rapid changes in consumer behavior all have made keeping things running smoothly increasingly difficult.
Consider the challenge for retailers who must distribute their order review teams among team members’ home offices. Those agents might not be equipped to view order data and shoppers’ personally identifiable information from remote locations. That raises the risks of running afoul of privacy regulations and encountering data breaches at a time when cyberattacks appear to be on the rise.
Let’s drill down into the Business Continuity Package’s features, services and tools — Signifyd’s Agent Console, Insights Dashboard and its AI-driven Dynamic Review Capacity.
The Agent Console’s all-transaction risk-scoring services are the best in its class because it is informed by the massive scale of the Signifyd Commerce Network. The network consists of thousands of merchants processing millions of transactions in more than 100 countries.
The Insights Dashboard also taps into the Commerce Network to provide ecommerce trends and benchmarking data across the global merchant network.
Dynamic Review Capacity uses Signifyd’s self-learning systems to keep up with the constant changes in fraud attacks and consumer behavior in these chaotic times. The solution accurately identifies fraudulent orders and sees to it that legitimate orders are shipped promptly. Signifyd will maximize the approval rate on those orders and take liability for any chargebacks that result from its decisions.
Dynamic Review Capacity adapts to rapidly changing fraud schemes
The combination of Signifyd’s machine learning and the Commerce Network means Dynamic Review adapts to the rapidly evolving commerce environment far faster than a traditional rules-based solution could. Its rapid reaction, in particular, is important in the time of COVID-19, as retailers are seeing unusual order-volume spikes and unusual spikes in orders for particular items — consider hand sanitizer, toilet paper and paper towels, for instance.
“When a lot of people are self-quarantined or staying in their homes and being in a lot less public places, we’re going to see a shift in behavior,” Shelley Kohan, founder of retail consultancy Shelmark Consulting, told us. “We’ve talked about how ecommerce is supposed to grow over the next few years, but this is something that’s going to happen in our first quarter, that is going to change behavior in quarters two, three and four.”
Together the elements of the Business Continuity Package provide the tools merchants need to fight the three-front battle brought on by the coronavirus pandemic:
- With the automated solutions in place, merchants can make up for the loss of productivity and throughput that results from review agents having to work remotely. When order review can’t keep up with incoming orders, fraud increases and approval rates, customer experience and revenue all take a hit.
- Orders will be reviewed while all PII is protected and all compliance issues around privacy and data-breaches are handled. Merchants need not worry about whether remote agents are equipped to view and secure PII from home offices.
- Signifyd’s learning machines can adapt to new and more aggressive fraud attacks launched by criminals seeking to take advantage of the chaos sown by the coronavirus’ spread. Rigid rules are simply not up to the task.
No question, these are challenging times. But retailers have proven themselves to be innovative and resilient. We have no doubt that industry leaders are making bold decisions now that will allow them to weather the current uncertainty and prepare them for a rapid and positive trajectory in the post-COVID-19 world.
Photo by Getty Images
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