Do you manually review online orders?

So your company allows customers to order from you online -– smart move. You can streamline processes, increase customer loyalty … and expose yourself to online fraud. Manually reviewing some orders can minimize that risk. But how many of your peers are taking that extra safeguard?

Recent research from CyberSource can give you an idea of what your peers (and competitors) are doing. Its 2008 Online Fraud Report reveals just how many companies are using the best practice:

• 82% of companies that sell online manually review orders
• The manual review rate is 27% (up from 23% over the prior year), and
• Companies manually review one in every three online orders.

At first, it may seem to undercut the benefit you’re after. After all, the idea was to get fewer staffers involved in the ordering process. And it’ll definitely take a chunk out of your staffers’ time to tackle this task.

But considering that 1.3% of online orders are found to be fraudulent, it’s worth devoting some eyes to reviewing some –- not all -– orders that come through your Web site.

How thorough can you afford to be?

So how long is your company willing to wait to put an order through while a suspicious-looking order is being verified?

That’s a number for you and other top execs, including the head of Sales and your CEO to set. The typical window is two to three business days, though some companies will wait up to 10 and others won’t even drag it out past one workday.