According to a survey, removing disputes from the payments ecosystem has “become the number one concern for sellers, with a tertiary concern of first-party-misuse1.”
As noted in an update from Verifi, the question is – how do you stop disputes and still do right by your customer? Research shows “it’s five to twenty five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than keep an existing one, comparatively, after a positive post-purchase experience, 77% of consumers recommend brands to their peers.”
Dispute management is “an essential customer retention strategy.”
In Verifi’s most recent webinar, ICYMI: 2022 Was A Big Year For Disputes, experts from Verifi sat down with one of Verifi’s largest seller clients “to discuss dispute strategy.”
This particular seller’s view was that “the post-purchase consumer experience is imperative to mitigating friendly fraud, which is so often the result of consumer confusion.” As digital payments expand, consumers now “make purchases from multiple devices, with multiple family members accessing the same accounts, and often utilizing varied kinds of payment portals to process the payments.”
In the webinar, panelists concluded, “it’s only natural that it would be difficult to trace certain transactions back to the source.” The first step in dispute mitigation and a positive post-purchase experience “should start with transaction transparency.”
Verifi’s client explained:
“We tend to think of disputes [as a] funnel, or a waterfall, and the higher up the funnel we can provide clarity for the customer or resolve the issue, the better for everyone involved in the dispute process.” The client goes on to detail that they use Verifi’s Order Insight to provide additional information to the customer through their bank – within the customer’s banking applications with digital receipts, or through issuer customer service agents who are given enhanced transaction detail to communicate back to the customer.”
Now with Visa’s new compelling evidence changes, the ICYMI: 2022 Was A Big Year For Disputes speaking panel “agreed another layer of protection will be available for sellers to deflect 10.4 fraud disputes.”
Using Order Insight, sellers are already “preparing to have Qualified Transaction Data automatically sent back to issuers to deflect invalid disputes before they become chargebacks and factor into fraud and dispute ratios.”
As noted in the update, if a customer still “believes a transaction should be disputed after transaction clarity has been provided, sellers can add ease to the post-purchase experience by using tools like Verifi’s RDR and CDRN, which allows sellers to refund the pre-dispute before it becomes an official chargeback.”
The seller panelist explained, “we really think receiving a chargeback and representing it should be a last resort… we think about disputes in a holistic way and try to deflect as many as possible up top [of the funnel], and what we cannot, we refund [via RDR and CDRN] where it makes sense.”
Dispute representment “can lead to lost customers and comes with added operational expenses and high fees.” The sharp rise in dispute volumes over the pandemic “catapulted all stakeholders into action to collaborate on how to remove unnecessary disputes from the ecosystem.”
Look ahead to 2023, sellers have “more options than ever deflect disputes and combat friendly fraud on a global scale.”