Improve your customer experience by monitoring declined transactions

Article contributor / Brooke Jacobson / Data Analyst, Market Intelligence & Data Analytics

Declined transactions are a part of all debit card programs, but are your customers experiencing declines that you can prevent? Reviewing declined transactions with decline codes can help financial institutions improve their customer experience through addressing preventable declines.

Action codes provide information regarding whether a transaction is approved or declined, and the accompanying completion code provides additional information as to why it was approved or declined. The combination of these two data points can help financial institutions address process and data issues causing otherwise valid transactions to be declined. Examples include:

• Ensure staff remember to reset expiration dates when cards are reissued at the branch.
• Periodic review of BIN blocks to ensure current blocks are still appropriate.
• Enter instant issue cards into SHAZAM^® Access when issued to ensure they are ready to use.
• Reminders to cardholders to destroy old cards upon activation of new cards and to update card information for all reoccurring payments.

SHAZAM Insight provides a declined transaction report named All Denied Transactions (CR520-R). This report provides a list of all declined transactions during the specified period including the PAN, merchant, transaction amount, ISO action code and additional response code which includes the completion code. This detailed transaction listing allows Insight subscribers to identify specific cards experiencing declines along with the reasons for the declines.

*This data doesn’t represent real customer data.

Customization hours in Business Intelligence Services™ can be used to create a custom dashboard monitoring trends in decline codes. This information can be used to understand the top reasons for declines and whether those declines are increasing or decreasing month over month or year over year. Percent of total transactions declined can be monitored as well as more detailed information about specific decline codes and reasons. Additional segmentation by transaction type such as card present and card not present is also possible. A decline monitoring dashboard can help quickly identify the trends in decline rates and types helping subscribers identify where action is needed and whether action taken is successfully improving approval rates and ultimately cardholder experience.

Interested in learning more about how SHAZAM’s data offerings can support your debit card program? Contact your client executive today to learn more about SHAZAM Insight, SHAZAM Insight with Data Select, and Business Intelligence Services™.