Dispute.com - Chargeback Help

Handling chargeback disputes well requires a deft touch. Dealing with chargeback disputes can turn into an expensive beast if your chargeback strategy isn’t robust enough. A lot of chargebacks are handled with automation, which makes sense. Many cases are simple and don’t need extra attention.

The problem is the cases that do need extra attention will probably be complicated. It isn’t an good economic choice for every company to devote personnel to understanding the intricacies of chargeback disputes.

Except without good customer support handling your chargeback disputes, you risk losing a lot of money to chargeback disputes that end in a bad resolution.

Instead of having designated personnel handling your chargeback disputes, it may make more sense to seek outside help.

Before you decide, figure out your chargeback situation, and assess.

Reasons Merchants Often Don’t Seek Chargeback Assistance

Even when merchants are aware they have a chargeback problem, there are a couple reasons why they might not look for help.

They might not think they need help, because they want to solve their problem with internal personnel. Which can work if you do it right.

Or they don’t know that they can look elsewhere for help.

Fraud prevention professionals and revenue recovery professionals are out there. Help exists.

There’s a narrative in doing business that would like to convince business owners to believe chargebacks are just part of the cost of doing business. Write them off and eat the cost.

They don’t have to be. It is possible to reduce the costs of chargebacks and lose less money to fraud.

It’s tough to do without the right expertise.

You get the right experts, they can work all kinds of magic.

• Find chargeback triggers in your policies and processes
• Track down sources of chargebacks
• Build strategies on tools and tactics that will solve your particular problems
• Pre-warn about potential chargeback painpoints in the future
• Build sustainable strategy that’ll help your business
• Build anti-fraud machines to protect your assets
• Create systems that can track your book of business in real time to create early warnings for potential risks
• Handle representment for you in the inevitable event of invalid disputes

For a start.

Let’s look a little deeper.

Professional Chargeback Management

Customer disputes split two ways.

• Prevention
• And representment

Representment is what you do after you get a chargeback.

Prevention, though, because it comes first, deals with a lot more.

If your prevention strategy is robust enough, you can prepare for immediate dispute relief. Or you can put long-term strategies in place to reduce chargeback problems before they happen.

Preventing chargebacks is the goal. No matter how airtight your strategy, disputes will get you sometimes. You will need a strong representment strategy as well.

It will always be the case that some chargeback disputes come from legitimate complaints. Which is good. Those are learning opportunities. Legitimate customers initiate invalid claims, sometimes without being aware of it. We call that friendly fraud. A good representment process mitigates the losses incurred by friendly fraud.

Not all fraud is friendly. All chargeback disputes have to be evaluated.

If you do work with chargeback professionals, evaluate them in three key areas.

Information, experience, and expertise.

Information

Good chargeback management strategy will be data driven. Experts in this will know how to collect and organize data to create an optimum defensive strategy to deal with disputes.

Experience

The pay space is a complicated space. You will benefit from the experience of the people you work with. You want professionals who have seen a lot of the business of doing business, so they know what to do with the data they find.

Expertise

As with most professional ecosystems, the world of chargeback disputes has its myriad complexities. Look for partners who demonstrate a strong understanding of their ecosystem’s most current realities and the technology governing them.
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Are There Merchant DIY Options?

If you aren’t sure you can afford bringing in outside professionals just yet, or you prefer DIY solutions, you can theoretically manage chargeback disputes yourself.

It is possible to handle chargebacks internally. For some businesses, it will make sense to keep designated staff who are in charge of dealing with your chargebacks. The information to become a practical expert in the field is out there. Banks and credit card companies publish all the information someone needs to understand how chargeback disputes work.

Just like any niche knowledge, chargeback disputes are headache risks for anyone coming at them without a strong background. That means they’re also minefields of potential costly errors.

Sometimes learning a little bit about a subject is enough to convince you that the smart move is bringing in the experts.

So how do you decide?

Chargeback Assistance Options

There are three ways to handle any chargeback dispute strategy.

• In-house management.
• Outsourcing.
• Or combining both.

In-house management allows you the most control, if it makes economic sense for you to do that.

Outsourcing, if you do it right, means your business is immediately equipped with expertise.

In-House

You may find that handling all your disputes inside your organization will work perfectly for you. If you decide to do that, it might make sense to bring in an expert consultant to help you set up your strategies.

Be warned, it might lower your odds to handle everything about your chargeback disputes in-house. It just depends how you set up the process.

Advantages:

• Total control
• Lower up-front cost
• Consistency
• Scalable

Challenges:

• Requires designated personnel and time
• Full responsibility for all aspects of management
• Less thorough data
• Lower ROI

Outsourced

Properly executed, collaboration with outside experts relieves headaches, reduces errors, and it ends up paying for itself over time. Finding the right partner can be a superpower.

Advantages:

• Expertise in all areas of dispute prevention
• Fewer chargebacks and more reversals
• Experienced use of industry-appropriate data
• You don’t have to use your own people

Challenges:

• You risk a bad professional relationship
• Possible up front costs
• Might not be equipped to scale with your business
• You risk finding a company that won’t devote the time your company needs

Combination

In the long run, your business will probably end up with a combination solution.

Advantages:

• A lot of control
• If you find a good collaborator, you can have a hands-on approach to solutions
• Less expensive than outsourcing the whole thing

Challenges:

• You might end up with an un-optimized balance of what you outsource versus what you keep in house
• It will mean devoting some of your people and time to chargebacks
• You will be liable for some aspects of disputes—the good and the bad

Ask for Help When You Need It

Bottom line: professionals solve problems. Whether you need to outsource all of your chargeback dispute handling, some of it, or none of it, an expert viewpoint will help you decide. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to any problem. Finding someone who will give it to you straight will give you the best odds of building a sustainable chargeback strategy.