A member realises at ten past nine on a Saturday evening that the call she took an hour ago was not from her bank. She has moved money.
Every minute now matters. What she finds is a contact page listing weekday hours, a general enquiry form and an automated line offering six options, none of which is the one she needs.
Step 1: make the fraud route unmissable
Separate, prominent and available at every hour. This is not a category of customer service, it is an emergency route, and it should look like one on every page.
Step 2: never queue it behind routine contact
A fraud report waiting behind balance enquiries is a process failure with a measurable cost. Identification of the contact type must happen in the first few seconds.
Step 3: stop the bleeding first
Freeze the card, halt any pending payments, secure the account. Everything else, including how it happened, comes after the immediate containment.
Step 4: tell people how to verify who they are speaking to
That they should hang up and call a number they already hold or use their own app. This single instruction prevents the second fraud that frequently follows the first.
Step 5: explain what information will never be requested
Full passwords, one time codes, or any request to move money to a safe account. Publishing this repeatedly is the most effective prevention available.
Step 6: capture the detail properly
What happened, when, how contact was made, what was transferred and to where. Recorded accurately at the first contact, this makes everything afterwards faster.
Step 7: explain the recovery process honestly
What can be attempted, what the likely timescales are and what outcomes are possible. False hope and unnecessary despair are both damaging.
Step 8: explain the reimbursement position
What the rules are, what factors are considered and how long a decision takes. People want to know this immediately and deserve an honest answer rather than a vague one.
Step 9: handle a blocked card sympathetically
Many blocks are precautionary and the member is simply stranded, which is the ground in card problems members report out of hours.
Step 10: recognise vulnerability
Fraud victims are frequently distressed and sometimes targeted because they are vulnerable. The response must account for that rather than processing them.
Step 11: route it to a human immediately
Anything involving money already moved needs a person now. Automation belongs in recognising the situation and getting somebody there faster, not in handling it.
Step 12: follow up rather than closing it
Victims frequently discover more later, and a single point of contact matters enormously to somebody who has been through this.
Step 13: get the route right the first time
Misrouted fraud contact is the worst possible routing failure, which is the ground in fraud and suspicious activity enquiries routed correctly.
Step 14: recognise it in seconds at any hour
An assistant that identifies a fraud report immediately, gives the containment instructions, captures the detail and escalates straight to a person on a Saturday evening saves money that a Monday morning cannot, handled with the care set out in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot. The cost of a slow route is the same one described in trade account applications that stall. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under financial advisors.