Gen Zers Prioritize Fraud Protection & Exceptional CX: Prepare Your Store to Meet their Needs

You’ve carefully crafted the perfect online store to appeal to young customers. You’re creating a brand that resonates with them and offering great experiences they can’t find in brick-and-mortar stores. But if your site isn’t prepared to accommodate their needs, you could lose them — and their business.

The youngest adults and teens in Gen Z are the most likely of all age groups to have been locked out of an account due to fraud, according to a 2021 survey by Forter. This may seem surprising given the perception that younger people are the savviest when it comes to digital security. However, their relative inexperience with ecommerce means they’re more vulnerable than older generations.

A Lack of Trust

In addition to being more susceptible to fraud, Gen Z is also less trusting of merchants after a fraudulent incident than older generations are. Sixty percent of 18-to-24-year-olds surveyed by Forter had less trust in a merchant after being locked out of an account due to fraudulent activity, compared with 52 percent for those 25 or older.

These findings are problematic for merchants because they suggest that younger consumers may be less likely to shop with them again after an unpleasant payment experience, whether that’s in a physical location or at checkout on a website or app.

This lack of trust can make it harder to retain customers, so it’s important for retailers targeting these young consumers to take steps now to earn their trust. 

Better CX and Fraud Protection Can Help Stores Retain Customers

In order to appeal to this generation, retailers need to be able to put customer experience at the forefront of their business. In fact, one study found that Gen Z shoppers are willing to spend an average of 21 percent more on a purchase if they have a positive experience.

In addition, it’s important for merchants to also offer fraud protection and customer experience beyond just the click-of-a-button—from start to finish.

An online store’s most powerful weapon against fraud is data. But when that data becomes siloed, it loses its ability to protect your customers. 

A single customer can place a card-not-present order on your site, then come back a few days later and place an in-store order with the same credit card — but if you don’t share the data between channels, you could decline both transactions and damage the customer experience.

By combining the power of your ecommerce channel with the power of your retail channel, you can use real-time customer data to prevent false declines and keep shoppers coming back.

Author bio

Payment industry guru Taylor Cole is a passionate payments expert who understands the complex world of Best Payment Providers. He also writes non-fiction on subjects ranging from personal finance to stocks to cryptopay. He enjoys eating pie with ice cream on his backyard porch, as should all right-thinking people.