Pioneering the gift card market
Gift cards continue to be a leading gift of choice for millions of people globally. It’s no surprise that this booming global prepaid and gift card market is expected to reach $800 billion by 2030, and Blackhawk Network (BHN) will continue to fuel that growth. The company is an industry trailblazer, processing $28 billion in transactions annually for more than 9,000 brands.
One of the reasons these brands partner with BHN is because they support the entire card program, from selling, distributing, and promoting cards, to handling risk, compliance, and fraud. BHN protects consumers by proactively mitigating gift card fraud in-store and online, all while actively handling disputes to help ensure positive customer experiences.
James Moreno, manager of cardholder disputes and negative balances at BHN, oversees a team that helps manage disputes between customers, companies, and payment card services including Visa, Mastercard, and Pulse.
When a customer notices missing funds or unknown charges on their gift card or prepaid card, they can file a claim with BHN directly. The process can be involved, as the workflow includes customer-initiated contact with the card issuer to provide their details and card information, the intake of a dispute submission form, gathering supporting information, and submitting the entire collection of information for review.
The disputes team oversees this operation: gathering information and evidence, processing claims and managing review and arbitration cycles, so they can quickly get money back in the hands of customers. Successful chargebacks keep customers happy and increase sales for brands, which is why Moreno takes pride in his team’s fast, accurate dispute resolution capabilities.
“We have a CSAT score of 4.4 out of 5, which is amazing for disputes,” says Moreno. “It shows we are turning a customer’s bad experience into a good one.”
Fast resolutions for happy customers
Moreno supports his team by looking for ways to make their jobs less stressful and more productive.
Several years ago, he discovered that BHN’s customer service teams used ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) to optimize and automate workflows. He knew that by adding thoughtful customizations, the dispute team could manage customer inquiries through the ServiceNow AI Platform, improving speed and reducing errors. However, much of the dispute management process was still manual. Every card payment service had different workflows, requirements, and portals for disputes, and agents spent their days switching between platforms.
The ServiceNow team introduced Moreno to Financial Services Operations (FSO), allowing disputes for all payment card services to be managed through a single product. He recalls, “Our breakthrough moment came when we learned about the new Financial Services Operations offering, featuring an enhanced dispute management module that could help us revolutionize how we handle disputes.”
A central part of the FSO solution, ServiceNow Disputes Management, Built with Visa integrates with Visa and Mastercard to eliminate the need for agents to switch between multiple systems when managing disputes. Built-in rules clarify the information and workflows needed for each service, further reducing errors and streamlining processes.
AI-powered work orchestration capabilities use these integrations to automatically pull reports from each service and update case files. ServiceNow Disputes Management, Built with Visa also monitors timelines, issuing alerts the instant responses are received and adding reminders when deadlines are close. Agents can now focus on reviewing cases and pushing them through the pipeline faster, which according to Moreno, accelerates dispute resolutions by up to 30%.
The automation and built-in logic also mean that the team is less likely to miss out on situations where they have chargeback rights, which has helped BHN achieve a recovery rate of 95-98%, well above the 79% industry average.
“Typically, a chargeback takes up to 90 days, but we’re averaging resolutions within 30 days,” says Moreno. “The secret behind our speed and accuracy is the automation and rules in ServiceNow Disputes Management, Built with Visa. We’re getting our hands-on information quicker. This means we can confirm fraud faster and speed resolution for our customers.”
Good for customers and agents
One of the biggest changes for customers comes from BHN’s new self-service web-based application. Rather than downloading an online form to initiate a claim, customers can now enter information directly into the tool and immediately kickstart a Disputes Management case. While it’s only being used by a few brand websites so far, Moreno hopes to expand the application to all participating brands soon. He’s also working to align it with questionnaires built into Disputes Management that include questions that provide agents with the information needed by each payment service. By gathering more information from the customer upfront, the dispute team can further accelerate resolution times, reduce customer headaches, decrease call volume, and free up agent time to focus on other high-value tasks.
BHN agents are thrilled with the migration. “Agents love working with ServiceNow Disputes Management. It streamlines case management, making it easier to find and connect information through one platform,” says Moreno.
The dispute team typically had the longest training period amongst customer service teams—four weeks—because new agents needed to memorize every step and requirement for each service. Moreno believes that with ServiceNow Disputes Management, Built with Visa’s AI-powered capabilities providing rules and automation, they will be able to shorten training to just one week. This will reduce operating costs, while allowing the dispute team to scale more easily.
Faster decisions supported by AI
The next step for Moreno involves taking greater advantage of ServiceNow AI Agents. AI case summarization, for example, can provide human agents with a clear overview of what has already happened in a case. This is especially helpful as agents typically don’t follow a single case end-to-end but instead focus on specific tasks in the workflow.
Moreno also plans to take advantage of AI agents to review merchant responses and evidence. AI agents could pull out the most relevant information from a response, directing human agents’ attention to the most compelling evidence. The team looks forward to adopting additional AI innovation. Blackhawk is considering AI workflows to screen dispute cases for friendly fraud efficiently. The system will provide reasoning for identifying these cases, which can then be reviewed by human disputes agents before making a decision. An AI agent will draft emails to cardholders with the outcome and rationale, which will be reviewed by disputes analysts before sending.
“I expect that we could automate responses for 45% of our cases by using the power of the ServiceNow AI Platform to streamline escalations and support decision-making for agents,” says Moreno.
Maintaining customer loyalty
BHN’s ServiceNow journey is also supported by trusted partner, Coforge. The digital services and solutions provider played an instrumental role in the development and go-live phases of the FSO implementation. “One of the things we value most about Coforge is their commitment to truly understanding our needs. They consistently take the time to listen, collaborate, and tailor solutions to ensure we achieve the best possible outcomes,” Moreno says.
The partnership continues to play a key role—helping BHN to further transform their dispute management processes and set a new standard in the payments industry. “We’ve been on a transformative journey for disputes with ServiceNow,” says Moreno. From databases to CSM to FSO for Disputes Management, BHN is continually taking steps to remove friction from the dispute resolution process to delight customers and brands.
“Brand and customer loyalty are fundamental to what we do,” concludes Moreno. “ServiceNow helps us deliver fast, easy dispute resolution, which is good for the customer, brands, and BHN.”