There is a fine line that all merchants must walk to prevent chargebacks during the holidays and provide excellent customer service. People do not like to jump through a ton of hoops to make a purchase. But there are times when taking extra precautions to prevent fraud will save you a massive headache later when the sales reports come out. A chargeback takes away from your bottom line, and when it involves a stolen credit card, you can be out of the money and the merchandise, which only compounds your loss.
How You Can Prevent Chargebacks This Season
You can do a wide range of things to prevent a chargeback from happening. Here are some things that you can do to keep it from happening to you.
- You will want to know what the issue is that caused the chargeback. If there is a service issue or a defect in the product, you can deal with it to make sure it never happens again. In a few cases where billing issues occurred, knowing the problem quickly can lead to customer retention.
- Make sure to educate your employees on the practices of checking IDs and matching up signatures. They will also need to know the return policy and articulate it to customers every time a purchase is made. Chargebacks can be painful when the customer is not educated on the policy or when an employee runs a chargeback in violation of the policy.
- Have a system of controls that can decline certain cards based on history. Customers that abuse the chargeback option can find themselves being declined at the register when they try to purchase if they have a high return rate.
- Change controls if you find that they are not working. Too many merchants get caught up following controls they think are working when they are not. Changing things to match the times allows your company to keep up with the times.
If you are concerned about chargebacks, following these simple ideas will help minimize the risk. Ethoca chargebacks are a way to keep your company from suffering a significant loss after the holidays. These simple ideas can also help reduce the amount of fraud that can take place and help you retain more of your inventory that can then be sold to faithful customers that honestly buy your merchandise.
