ClearSale helps Bevilles save time, approve more orders, and avoid fraud

Bevilles sells jewellery to celebrate major life events like engagements, weddings, and anniversaries as well as classic gold and silver jewellery and watches “to make every customer feel fabulous,” in the words of CEO Michelle Beville. From sterling silver children’s earrings under $30 to elaborate $10,000 diamond rings, Bevilles stocks pieces that appeal to customers at all price points—and to fraudsters seeking jewellery for resale.

Because the possible losses caused by even one fraudulent online order can run to thousands of dollars, and because card-not-present fraud has been on the rise in Australia since the start of the pandemic, Bevilles staffers found themselves spending more and more time putting orders under the loupe when they were flagged by the store’s previous fraud prevention provider as suspicious.

Bevilles turned to ClearSale to help streamline their fraud prevention process and relieve some of the time burden on their employees. Because ClearSale backs its proprietary fraud-screening algorithms with the world’s largest team of dedicated fraud analysts to handle manual reviews, “we can now fulfill orders quickly by taking out our manual verification step,” says ecommerce Manager Sunilkumar Nagarajan. “It’s cost savings for the business.” With ClearSale, Bevilles also approves more good orders, earns more revenue, and retains more customers—all while reducing the cost of chargebacks to $0.

The Challenge: Free up employees from the high-stakes responsibility of screening orders for fraud

Bevilles has customers across Australia who turn to the retailer for its easy online ordering of engagement and wedding rings, everyday fine jewellery, and designer watches. During the country’s extended Covid-19 lockdowns, consumer spending online increased by 44% in 2020—good news for businesses that saw their in-store traffic disrupted by health and safety precautions.

However, fraudsters moved online, too, and while consumer ecommerce was booming, card-not-present fraud against merchants increased by 3.8% in 2020. The result was more than $418 million in losses for Australian ecommerce. Jewellery is an attractive target for fraud rings because it’s easy to resell.

To protect their online revenue stream and avoid expensive chargeback fees, Bevilles relied on the built-in fraud protection tools in their ecommerce platform. However, those tools only flagged suspicious orders, creating a dilemma for Bevilles team members: They had to manually verify the customer details for each flagged order and decide whether it was legitimate or fraud.

That’s not easy for people without specialist fraud analysis training, and the stakes were high: Mistake a fraudster for a good customer, and the company could lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in merchandise and chargeback fees on a bad order. Reject a good order by mistake and the company would lose the value of the order—and perhaps lose the customer for life.

43% of Australian ecommerce shoppers agree they’ll never order again from a merchant who declines their order.

30% agree they would post something negative on social media about the merchant after a decline.

Source: ClearSale’s State of Consumer Attitudes, Fraud & CX 2021

Bevilles knew that their existing fraud-control approach was taking up too much employee time. They didn’t know that it was also generating many false declines.

The Solution: ClearSale Total Guaranteed Protection

Bevilles turned to ClearSale to offer a comprehensive fraud protection solution that would relieve their employees of the burden of screening flagged orders. ClearSale’s unique AI-driven statistical algorithm screens every order to identify potential fraud and to “learn” what good orders look like for each merchant. When there are suspicious orders, the world’s largest team of CNP fraud analysts—more than 1,000 ClearSale experts—are standing by to quickly review and approve or decline them.

ClearSale has freed Bevilles employees to focus on their core business tasks. As a result, orders are processed and fulfilled faster and the company saves money.

ClearSale is delivering another benefit for Bevilles: more approved orders. Because ClearSale has such advanced technology and so many expert resources, it can safely approve orders that other fraud prevention solutions might reject because they can’t assess them accurately. Often, merchants don’t even realize that they’re losing out on good orders because their fraud provider labels all rejected orders as fraud.

When ClearSale started screening Bevilles orders, “we noticed the difference immediately, as ClearSale approved many orders that our previous provider would have falsely declined,” says Sunilkumar. “We would have cancelled those orders if we didn’t have ClearSale approval.”

ClearSale offers Bevilles another advantage: freedom from worry about fraud-related chargebacks. With ClearSale Total Guaranteed Protection, Bevilles is not responsible for chargeback costs related to CNP fraud.

The Results: No time spent in-house on order review, more orders approved, no chargeback costs

Since ClearSale took over Bevilles order screening in June 2021, the company’s approval rates and its total approved value have steadily improved

Even when there’s been more attempted fraud:

Meanwhile, the average chargeback ratio during this period was 0.35%, and Bevilles paid nothing for those chargebacks thanks to ClearSale Total Guaranteed Protection.

After just five months with ClearSale, Bevilles has reclaimed its employees’ time and enjoyed “improvements in false declines and in chargebacks,” says Sunilkumar. Bevilles also has new peace of mind about ecommerce fraud. “We worry less about chargebacks, because they’re guaranteed by ClearSale.”