Fraud Controls Were Creating Issues for Legitimate Customers
K&N wasn't new to the world of ecommerce fraud and its prevention methods. Its previous fraud solution provided partial coverage, but it also introduced a different set of problems.
Some legitimate orders were being falsely declined, creating unnecessary problems for customers who were attempting to purchase K&N products.
At the same time, transactions that required additional scrutiny would end up in the hands of K&N's customer service team. These employees were responsible for managing rules and filters and manually reviewing orders that couldn't be approved or rejected by the existing system.
K&N was in a situation where it needed to protect its ecommerce business from fraudulent transactions, but the process for doing so was taking time away from the people whose primary responsibility was serving customers. Transaction volume was growing, and a model that relied heavily on manual intervention was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
High-volume ecommerce operations know that even a small percentage of orders requiring human intervention can translate into a substantial workload. The goal for K&N was to reduce false declines and take fraud decisioning out of the hands of a team focused on customer service.
Why Rules-Based Fraud Tools Struggle When a Business Scales
Ecommerce businesses tend to struggle with fraud prevention as they grow. One reason is that the rules and filters they have in place are great at pointing out suspicious transactions, but the workload gets overwhelming when those decisions require frequent human intervention.
The Merchant Risk Council's 2025 Global eCommerce Payments & Fraud Report notes that 19% of manually screened orders end up declined. That number means 81% of screened orders are completely fine, but they take up valuable employee time anyway.
False declines create another cost. Research from Aite-Novarica Group, now Datos Insights, found an average false-decline rate of 1.16% among surveyed merchants. Based on U.S. ecommerce sales of $960.1 billion in 2021, the researchers estimated that false declines represented $11.1 billion in lost sales.
K&N's customer service team was responsible for these transaction reviews, creating a process that was difficult to maintain as ecommerce volume increased. The company needed fraud decisioning that could handle that scale without slowing down its legitimate customers or putting extra pressure on its staff.
Replacing Rules and Manual Review With Full-Service Decisioning
K&N's solution was to move from a fraud-management model that depended heavily on internal rules and manual intervention to ClearSale's full-service engine.
ClearSale took on the decisioning process, giving K&N a way to evaluate transactions without requiring its customer service team to manage the same volume of rules and reviews directly.
That meant K&N could focus its internal resources on serving customers.
With ClearSale, K&N gained:
-
More accurate transaction decisions, helping distinguish legitimate customers from potentially fraudulent activity.
-
Fewer false declines, allowing more legitimate purchases to move through the checkout process.
-
Less manual workload for the customer service team, reducing the need for employees to act as fraud reviewers.
-
Decisioning services, improving fraud management without requiring a proportional increase in manual intervention.
-
Measurable business results, with improvements in approval rates, chargeback performance, and online revenue delivered within 90 days.
Stronger fraud controls didn't have to mean more legitimate customers were turned away, and reducing fraud risk did not have to mean shifting more work onto customer service.
Higher Approval Rates, Lower Chargebacks, and 4.55% More Online Revenue
ClearSale's impact was visible within 90 days. K&N achieved a 99.1% approval rate and reduced its chargeback rate to 0.12%. Top-line online revenue also went up by 4.55%.
It's also important to note that these improvements continued after the implementation period. K&N's performance data shows a sustained improvement in approval rates alongside consistently low chargeback rates:
| Year |
Total Approval Rate |
Chargeback Rate |
| 2022 |
97.55% |
0.53% |
| 2023 |
98.39% |
0.12% |
| 2024 |
98.96% |
0.14% |
| 2025 |
99.24% |
0.12% |
K&N's total approval rate increased by 1.69 percentage points, from 97.55% to 99.24%, from 2022 through 2025. The company's chargeback rate also fell from 0.53% to 0.12%, representing a 77.4% relative reduction.
The two metrics moved in the right direction together, proving that K&N wasn't simply approving more transactions by accepting more fraud.
ClearSale also helped address the operational challenge behind the numbers. By taking responsibility for fraud decisioning, K&N's customer service team was no longer responsible for handling manual reviews, leaving more time to focus on growing the business.
