How Mockingbird curbed fraud without hurting the customer experience

Learn more about Mockingbird:

Mockingbird creates baby gear products to equip and empower their customer base of parents. Case in point: Their award winning products are designed to grow with your family - the Single-to-Double stroller can expand to a double as your family needs change and the high chair 2-in-1 converts to a child chair as your little one gets older. Mockingbird is committed to building trust, and they offer their shoppers a 30-day risk-free try-at-home policy to decide if they like the product, encouraging them to test out their gear in the real world.

The Challenge: Detecting and preventing fraud

Mockingbird offers a generous, no-questions-asked, 30-day try-at-home policy as a point of pride to show shoppers that they stand behind their products. They encourage customers to try out their strollers in the wild, taking them to walk around local parks and playgrounds—and even offering tips such as putting weights in the stroller seat so that expectant parents can “simulate” the experience of pushing a baby in the stroller.

“I think that is a way to build trust with our customers, where we think you'll love it so much that you can go ahead and make that decision for yourself by trying it out,” says Nawreen Juthi, CX Product & Fulfillment Lead.

And as it turns out, customers genuinely do love their products: Their return rate for strollers stands at just 2.8%.

However, the generous try-at-home policy also opens the brand up to the risk of fraudulent behavior and returns policy abuse. They’ve come across several fraud rings that have involved their brand, so they’ve needed to build a strategy for detecting fraud and blocking fraudulent transactions before they can impact their profits. At the same time, they don’t want to negatively impact the shopping or return experience for their well-meaning customers.

Mockingbird knew they needed to strike the right balance by leveraging technology that could help them streamline the returns experience for low-risk shoppers, while flagging “high risk” transactions for potential fraud to help them avoid preventable losses. As it turned out, Loop had the versatile range of features to satisfy both of those needs.

The impact: Curbing fraud—without disrupting the customer experience

Mockingbird switched from Returnly to Loop close to five years ago because it was a better fit for their business as they scaled.

Last year, when they began experiencing problems with returns fraud, they were delighted to discover that Loop had continually innovated alongside their brand—and offered the right fraud prevention technology at the right time to help them.

Detecting risk factors for fraud

Mockingbird’s incidence of fraud has been steadily rising over the last year, due to some dark web fraud ring activity as well as label fraud and incidents involving shoppers sending back fake items. While using Loop to process returns, “we started noticing an increase in orders marked with the high-risk flag, which prompted us to dig deeper,” says Nathan Render, Director of Customer Experience.

They’ve been able to use Loop’s data to detect and prevent fraudulent behavior, by blocking certain customers from processing returns, for instance.

“With the fraud detection tools, “it’s given us the confidence to feel like we've got control of the situation,” says Render.

“When it first started happening, it was taking up a lot of time and resources, and we knew we were losing money. You feel like you have limited control over it - and it also started to spiral into several variations on the same type of fraud. With Loop’s support, we’ve been able to stop the bleeding and focus on a more proactive and strategic approach.”

Joining forces with Loop “was really the right place, right time,” says Render. “And we're really grateful for that. It allowed us to uncover it and act more quickly than we would have been able to otherwise. And I'll recommend Loop as a tool for others who are experiencing this same challenge.”

Recover revenue and protect profits with built-in fraud alerts

Fraud Detection

Proactive fraud mitigation

So what does that proactive approach look like for Mockingbird?

“The biggest move is that we are moving towards refund post-inspection,” says Juthi. By blocking shoppers from receiving a refund until they’ve visually inspected the merchandise, they can thwart con artists who’ve sent back counterfeit products or who refuse to send back a product at all.

To do this, Mockingbird is able to set up a workflow in Loop that requires inspection prior to refund. As they get better data around returns fraud, they plan to limit manual inspections to only transactions with high markers for risk, helping them save time and labor.

Beyond that, says Juthi, they’re pairing manual reviews with Loop’s detection tools to learn more about how to spot potentially fraudulent behavior. “We've started tracking the list of ‘Who are these people? What should their orders look like? What are some patterns that we're noticing between them?’”

For example, some customers have requested returns before the product has even arrived at their door, so the Mockingbird team has set up additional controls to ensure that returns can’t be initiated until the product has been confirmed as delivered.

“We're also getting better about which kind of orders we will cancel from the get-go because realistically, we don't even want them to make it to Loop. We don't want the product to ship out to them in the first place. So we're auditing the levels of risk that we're seeing on Shopify, and then seeing where we can be more strict about which orders we let through.”

Set up controls in your returns process to prevent policy abuse.

Workflows

Streamlined returns management

Mockingbird is lucky to have a loyal customer base that tends to love its products, with one of the lowest return rates in the industry.

That said, when legitimate customers do want to send back an item, Mockingbird wants to make sure that their returns experience is just as positive as the initial purchase experience. As long as customers are within their 30-day try-at-home period, they can use their website’s chat features to initiate a return request and use Loop’s returns portal to print out return mailing labels.

Because the products are bulky and sometimes require multiple boxes, the brand uses Loop’s multi-label functionality to print out multiple return labels, ensuring that the shopper can easily repackage the item and that the parts can be tracked to the same order. The customer can track the return shipping journey to see when the packages are delivered to the warehouse. They’ll then receive a refund upon successful product inspection at the warehouse.

Mockingbird’s previous returns experience required shoppers to coordinate all returns with their CX team, so Loop’s automation features save time on both sides and provide shoppers with a consistent, no-hassle returns experience that’s in line with their brand promise.

“We’ve overall had a very positive experience with Loop,”

says Render. Mockingbird appreciates Loop's willingness to work closely with them and incorporate their feedback to improve the platform's functionality. They’ve found Loop’s automation features help them save time on managing returns, while delivering a better experience for their shoppers. 

Automate your returns process for a streamlined customer experience

Returns

The results: Lower fraud and more efficient returns management

Since adopting Loop’s Fraud Tools, Mockingbird has been able to use Loop’s Fraud model algorithm to automatically flag potential “high risk” transactions, saving them over $26,000 in returns revenue. And in Mockingbird’s review of verified fraudulent transactions, Loop correctly flagged 81% of them.

Using Loop’s fraud detection features means that the Mockingbird team can easily identify most incidents so that they can spend less time on manual review—and more time on proactive measures to keep fraud at bay. Mockingbird estimates they were spending 20-30 hours per week manually managing returns fraud before using Loop's fraud detection tool, which has reduced the time spent fishing for a needle in a haystack. They are now able to easily search through potential fraud, spending less than 10 hours a week on fraud monitoring.

And by using Loop’s automation features to instantly process returns for eligible customers, Mockingbird can streamline workflows for customers who take advantage of their 30-day try-at-home policy, ensuring that eligible shoppers get a seamless and stress-free returns experience, without putting extra burden on their CX team (though they’re always available to help if anyone gets stuck or needs extra support!).

“Our relationship with returns and exchanges has shifted over time. It was a lot more complex, but we've automated it more with Loop,” which provides a better shopper experience, says Render. “And with the fraud prevention work, it’s been really invaluable to have Loop as a partner.”

Fight back against returns fraud.