By Frank Stornello, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, Verifi
To improve your bottom-line results and cut chargebacks e-commerce merchants need to implement a holistic chargeback protection and management solution
that not only prevents chargebacks, but also actively reclaims lost dollars to fraudulent chargebacks. Verifi recommends six best practices for successful chargeback protection and management.
1. Improve Internal Processes
Merchants should optimize several internal processes to minimize chargebacks. For example:
- Gather information you need to build your case when representing chargebacks.
- Improve customer service by making it easier for customers to contact your company. Consider extending hours of operation making it easier to reach a live person by reducing hold times and automated menu options. You don’t want customers to get frustrated, hang up and choose to call their issuing bank instead.
- Institute internal fraud monitoring that includes monitoring IP addresses or high-value transactions to prevent fraudulent chargebacks before they occur.
- Use chargeback notifications to learn quickly when a customer is disputing a charge. Notifications enable you to address chargebacks proactively without tightening up fraud control so much that you turn away good customers.
2. Prioritize Which Chargebacks to Fight and Represent
Whatever you do to prevent chargebacks, they will still happen, so you need to identify those that are most worthy of being fought and represented based on the expected ROI. Each dispute takes time and carries a fee from your acquirer. Consider the return on time and money spent and pick your battles carefully to maximize the performance of your chargeback protection program.