3 reasons why manual reviews should be removed in gaming

Most businesses and organisations that need to verify identity are now using or moving towards digital and real-time solutions. However, there are still many who use manual reviews.

Here’s three key reasons why manual reviews are best avoided.

Reason 1: Impact to customer journey

User experience is everything. Customers will be accessing services online, and expect to be able to complete a sign-up or transaction quickly and easily in today’s on-demand digital world.

Instead, manual reviews mean that a customer trying to onboard is stopped in their tracks and required to go offline, find proof of identity, or proof of address, and send these to companies or share them in outdated ways, and wait for them to be verified, which can take hours or days.

Today’s customers doesn’t expect to be blocked in this way. It causes friction, and means a loss of motivation on their part, and it means drop offs. Many customers can’t be bothered to go through a laborious identity verification process, and go to the hassle of finding recent statements (many customers don’t receive paper statements in today’s world) and so instead they choose to look elsewhere, for instant access through an alternative route (a competitor), than go through a cumbersome and outdated administrative hurdle that can be avoided.

One third of those aged 23-38 will drop a brand that doesn’t meet expectations (Brightpearl Report), and those expectations more and more are about instant access, and ease of use.

Reason 2: It takes more time

A barrier to the customer journey is bad enough, but if it just took a short amount of time to complete then it may be tolerable. For example, a few minutes. However, manual reviews can take a number of hours, days, or up to a week to complete, any of which is far too long, and leads to exponential drop-offs the longer that customers have to wait.

It also means a poor first experience with the brand, which can mean a customer sees the brand as the wrong choice, and doesn’t bother using the service once they’re signed up. Or they spend less money than they otherwise would have done at the point of sign-up, when they were initially motivated and looking to spend.

Indeed they might have wanted to use the account right away, or not at all, for example open a betting account and place a bet for a key sporting event taking place that day, or sign-up to a cryptocurrency platform on a day when it looks like a particularly good time to invest.

Reason 3: It costs more money  

Manual reviews cost a massive amount of money. For businesses or gaming operators it costs an average of £5-10 to review a document. That’s a lot of money for the thousands of people who sign-up to accounts.

Now consider the paradox that through a manual review which costs that much, the customer may get verified, and then because of the time lag or unsatisfying experience then not use the company at all, as they’ve looked elsewhere. This happens frequently, and is a shocking waste of money, and potential custom.

Then consider the potential lifetime value of a customer. If that person is able to sign-up and play instantly, and wins, and enjoys the experience with a gaming company, and turns into a loyal customer, that instant access (which costs a fraction of the price of a manual review) then turns into a lifetime value of thousands of pounds.

In other words, manual reviews can mean a company is paying to lose customers, and the potential revenues, and loyalty, that they offer.

No time to waste

If a review takes more than 24 hours customers go elsewhere. This happens as a general rule of thumb, but also for a myriad of particular reasons. For example, in gaming, if someone receives a link with enhanced odds from a gaming operator, but the link or the enhanced odds then expire in the time it takes to be verified, and that incentive as such backfires, then that potential customer won’t want to use the company, and will go elsewhere.

There is a better way

Using real-time identity verification means customers can onboard in a matter of minutes, if not in seconds. That means a huge increase in customer acquisition. For one of our key clients it’s meant an uplift of 68%. And that means a phenomenal boost in revenue, and the potential for customer loyalty.

Using Acuant Identity’s Alternative and Social Data for social authentication that takes seconds, as does iDocufy for document verification, BioMatch for facial authentication, and UtilityConnect for address verification takes seconds or minutes, and uses live utility data for instant and real-time results.

This creates a seamless and satisfying customer journey, that meets the expectations of modern customers, especially millennials and those younger. And as well as increased revenues for our clients as a result, it’s also hugely cheaper than traditional and outdated methods.

Our solutions also often mean greater precision, greater certainty, and the reduction or elimination of the risk of data breach. Plus, our solutions are all available via a single API, meaning they’re easy to integrate, and can be implemented in less than a week, in a bespoke format that suits each client and their customers’ needs and wants.

This leads to great results for customers and clients across every industry we work with, across 177 countries.