If you’ve never tried a payment gateway for your business, you’ve probably not heard about the term “chargeback” yet. But with the growing percentage of consumers shopping online and choosing to pay through digital transactions, a payment gateway will help you keep up with the competition and increase your revenues through online payments.
The first step to embracing online payments is to learn about chargebacks, how they impact your business and what you can do to keep them at bay:
What is a chargeback?
In essence, a chargeback is simply a reversal of a credit card payment directly to a bank. The difference between a refund and chargeback is that instead of asking for the money back from you, the consumer goes directly to the bank to ask for the reversal of the payment and take it out of your account.
What are the most common reasons for a chargeback?
A chargeback can happen for different reasons. The most common reason for a customer filing for a dispute is a clerical error where he is either billed for the wrong amount or double-billed for a single purchase.
Some customers will also file for a chargeback when a product doesn’t meet their expectations or when they don’t recognize the business name on the bill because it’s different from the store name or the website where they made the purchase.
Of course, there’s friendly fraud where a customer files for a chargeback for a valid purchase claiming that he did not authorize the purchase. In these cases, fraudsters already have the product and after days of using it, they file for a dispute so they can get their money back.
How can you avoid a chargeback?
Here’s the truth: chargebacks will happen at some point, but you can keep your chargeback rates low by implementing one very simple advice into your business—that is, excellent customer service. Here’s how:
- Be available.Most customers who file for a chargeback did so because they couldn’t reach a business or they’ve been ignored after trying to voice out their complaint.
Your goal is to keep the issue between you and the customer, so you have to be available to deal with complaints to keep the customer from going directly to the bank for a chargeback.
- Be specific with your product descriptions.Failed expectation is one of the most common reasons for a chargeback and you can avoid that by being specific when describing your products. Never advertise anything that you can’t deliver to avoid any disappointments that could lead to a chargeback.
At the end of the day, keeping chargeback rates low will be a test of how good your customer service is.
For sure, you won’t be able to please all your customers, but if you are available to them and you are providing them with excellent customer service, you will be able to avoid chargebacks and protect your business from huge losses. Of course, it would also help to find a reliable payment high risk merchant provider.
