E-commerce businesses rely on digital agencies to handle many different responsibilities – from developing a mobile app to creating a brand strategy. But when an agency is a true partner, they will also go out of their way to find the right vendors and tools to help their clients solve tough problems. Like finding the right fraud solution for stopping a formidable chargeback problem before it can do any more damage.
Here, we talk to Vector Media Group about how they helped one of their clients do just that – by implementing Sift Science.
Tell us about what you do…
Vector Media Group is a full-service interactive agency, meaning we work with clients on every aspect of their websites and mobile apps. We tackle projects in an integrated and comprehensive way by offering clients our team’s combined skills in development, branding and design, and marketing. We do everything from building websites and apps, to making them look their best, to ensuring they’re being marketed in the most effective way. Vector works extremely closely with our clients, making sure they’re involved and informed throughout our entire process.
Why were you looking for a fraud solution? How did you find Sift Science?
One of our clients – a well-known manufacturer and retailer whose products are extremely popular – came to us with a serious fraud problem. Their site had been falling victim to people successfully using stolen credit cards to purchase items, which led to an increased number of chargebacks. This unfortunate situation occurred as the holiday season— a very important time for our client — was approaching.
Not only did they need a solution which would work better than the semi-effective gateway solution they’d been using in the past, but they also needed a tool which was more automated and quick to implement. After conducting extensive research about fraud prevention options, we settled on Sift Science because we believed it would be the best, most helpful solution we could provide for our client.
How did you evaluate potential vendors and why did you ultimately decide to go with Sift Science?
First of all, Sift Science has an established customer base of well-known companies across a number of verticals. Second, when we trialled it against other fraud solutions, Sift Science came out on top. We ran thousands of known-good and known-bad transactions against Sift and some of Sift’s competitors – and Sift Science’s evaluations were the most accurate. We also spoke personally with the Sift Science team in order to gain insight into their future roadmap and general thought process.
Another aspect of Sift Science that made it stand out from its competitors was its comprehensive and easy-to-use API. The API is straightforward for us to integrate with, clear in operation, and well documented. This saved us time and saved our clients money, and is a major differentiator.
How long did it take you to integrate?
The integration process went very quickly. It was essential that we moved fast in order to protect our client and to put a stop to the fraud issues they were experiencing. Our client first came to us with this problem in October, and by mid-November we had researched and proposed a solution. After we decided on Sift Science, we began the formal development process.
From there it only took 10 days for the solution to be pushed into production. The entire process took less than a month. For this client, we integrated in phases in order for them to become comfortable with Sift Science and to allow them to train the program’s fraud model based on their results. First, we integrated Sift Science in a way that would flag orders, give the client feedback within their eCommerce CMS (CartThrob), but not actually take any action. This allowed the client to see how Sift Science would work on their site as well as allowing them to decide how risk-averse they needed to be. Once the client got comfortable, which happened very quickly, we integrated automation – which allows Sift Science to mark orders as fraud and automatically stop them.
What are the benefits of Sift Science to you? To your client?
Sift Science allows us to provide our clients with a fraud prevention solution we’re confident in. Sift saves us the time of having to develop ways to protect our clients from fraud, since we’re able to implement a tool that has access to data from a variety of sources and is trainable – so it gets better over time.
Sift Science helps us save our clients money by working to stop fraudulent orders from happening, helping reduce chargeback fees and lost inventory. For this client, Sift Science caught an instance of fraud within hours of going live. When fraud is reduced the client’s site becomes more efficient, which helps them grow their business and lets us concentrate on the development, design, and marketing that we’re good at!