Trust Starts at the Front Door of Your Business

Are your new users who they say they are? It makes sense that the best place to begin building trusted customer relationships is at the point of entry or front door of your business—during onboarding or new account signup. When you can verify identities and see that the information they provide is truly connected to that person right from the very beginning, you can prevent abuse and fraud more effectively while delivering an outstanding customer experience throughout their entire journey. A verifiably trustworthy customer base ultimately makes it easier to build trust in your organization's products and services.

Identity verification has been used extensively by retailers and financial institutions for fraud-prevention purposes. Traditionally identity verification has been used to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Identification Program (CIP) regulatory requirements or as part of an investigation involving questionable transactions. But online trust is becoming a priority across online environments—from ecommerce websites and news platforms to social media and other online communities—and activities including signup and online interactions.

Social media platforms and online communities make it easy to create an account without much identity verification. Monetizing their audience numbers has been the primary goal, so the more active the accounts, the better. It makes sense—customers have grown accustomed to frictionless online experiences, especially signing up for accounts. At the first sign of friction, they're likely to go elsewhere.

Trouble Walks Through Open Doors

Easy access has opened the door to bad actors and scammers with a wide range of objectives in mind. Widespread fakes, spam and abuse of online features, such as reviews and community posts, are eroding trust. According to Sift, 85% of consumers shopping online believe the reviews they read are sometimes, or often, fake or fraudulent¹. Scammers will abuse promotions designed to attract new customers as well as rewards and loyalty programs. Online "trolls" hijack comment threads, and bots spread spam. Cyber harassment and objectionable content have become front-and-center issues for some platforms. Online communities are also exploited by crime rings ranging from marketplace fraud to human trafficking. You wouldn't leave the front door to your home wide open for anyone to walk
right in. Then why do that for your business?

Because of these concerns, there is a movement emerging to promote and ensure consumer trust and safety in digital environments. Organizations are realizing that establishing trust in customer or user relationships affects everything from revenue and brand to compliance and risk management. As a result, their online trust and safety frameworks are expanding beyond fraud prevention to encompass cybersecurity, data privacy, and trusted content considerations.

As your organization develops an online trust and safety strategy, one easy and effective way to immediately boost recognition of trusted customers is to insert trust into the account signup process. That way, when someone knocks on your front door, you can quickly establish they are who they say they are, and welcome them into your platform with seamless access throughout their journey, based on your risk tolerance. From the customer's perspective, a simple behind-the-scenes check at the beginning of their engagement with an organization enables faster, smoother interactions across their lifetime as a customer. It's better for the customer, better for your brand, and better for your bottom line.

How to Establish Identity Trust

Determining the real identity behind a new customer or user gives you strong data for determining trust. It's no longer enough to simply accept a name, address, phone number, and email address as a complete identity. Comprehensive identity intelligence examines these—and myriad other digital data footprints—as well as the connections between them to generate statistically sound verification. Look for a trust solution that delivers this depth of intelligence, together with visual insights that demonstrate trust at a glance. Automatically score data points and gain predictive trust signals to fine-tune decision thresholds. Integrate easily with existing account setup processes to embed trust decisioning with account opening approvals.

Deep identity intelligence makes it easy to identify trusted customers, subscribers and users at the front door while delivering efficiencies throughout the customer journey. When you can separate trusted new accounts from those that "just don't quite add up," you can significantly reduce the downstream costs associated with identifying and preventing fraud. Establishing trust early also protects your company, networks and systems from threat actors looking for an easy way in. Developing a digital trust and safety strategy ultimately creates a trusted digital environment where customers can interact with confidence and safety—with some valuable extra benefits along the way.

Read our white paper "The Trust Paradigm for Online Business" to learn more about how your organization can enhance its digital trust and safety initiatives. Contact us anytime to schedule a proof of concept for our solution, Pipl Trust, or to book a meeting.

1. Fake Reviews: A Growing Fraud Concern Affecting Brand Loyalty and Growth, Sift, 2019