Footwear specialist Accent Group fixes its fraud management Achilles’ Heel

The firm gave its outdated manual fraud management system the boot, took on an intelligent trust platform and ran with it

With more than 750 stores and 36 websites, Australia and New Zealand’s largest footwear retailer, Accent Group has been supplying brands such as Platypus, Hype DC, The Athlete’s Foot, Skechers and Vans to consumers across the region.

With its digital business having grown to more than 24% of its total sales across a customer base of more than 9m customers, the firm wanted to scale this segment of its business to support growing partnerships, new acquisitions and consumer buying patterns.

However, amid the strong digital sales, one problem it was facing in fraud management was that the manual review process was flagging too many good customers as risky, causing unnecessary delays and customer experience incidents.

The obvious solution was to digitalize the fraud management process to embody automation, data-driven decisions to improve accuracy, and AI and ML to keep fine-tuning and personalizing customer profiles to preempt fraud and speed up detection and intervention.

Said Martin Hourigan, General Manager (Commercial), Accent Group: “Digital channels play a critical role in enabling our customers to shop with us any way they want. Our partnership with Forter means we now have a fraud platform that can support our continued innovation and growth while blocking fraud attempts and delivering a superior customer experience.”

With this move, Accent Group is continually improving ways to stop fraudsters and ensure that good customers can always complete their online transactions. According to Joe Lee, Vice President (APAC), Forter, some research has indicated that if a new online customer is declined, 40% of respondents may never patronize the e-commerce brand again. “Retailers like Accent Group understand that, in order to scale, they need a fully automated fraud solution that addresses the end-to-end buyer’s journey. We’re excited to work with Accent Group to help drive business and improve customer experience.”