Preventing Disputes - Best Practices

Disputes are inevitable in any business, but preventing disputes protects your business from unnecessary financial losses. It is important to monitor your chargeback ratios and take necessary measures constantly.

Here are some ways to prevent payment disputes:

Enable risk management options

The Risk Management settings in Zoho Payments allows you to block payments that fail the basic verification process. You will be able to block the payment when the cardholder’s CVV (enabled by default), ZIP Code, and Address cannot be verified. This serves as an initial filter to eliminate any fraudulent payments. Learn how to enable risk settings.

Watch out for potential fraud alerts

Zoho Payments notifies you when a payment could possibly be fraudulent or unauthorized. This allows you to verify the authenticity of the payment and issue a refund or contact the customer to confirm the payment before it gets disputed. Learn more about potential fraud alerts.

Review payments regularly

Request your dispute staff to review payments regularly. Review payments with unusual orders or huge order amounts, address mismatches, etc. You can also check if the same customer has multiple disputes, and you can review why it’s happening. Make sure to confirm the order with the customers before you process it.

Respond promptly

As soon as an inquiry or dispute is created, verify the payment and respond to it promptly. Skipping the deadline can cause even a formal inquiry to convert to a dispute. When you receive a dispute and if you think there’s nothing wrong from your end, challenge them within the given time. Otherwise, you lose the opportunity to defend your claim.

Communicate professionally

Whenever your payment receives an inquiry, reach out to your customer politely and courteously to understand what went wrong. Explain the situation from your perspective and present any evidence supporting your claim. The customer might withdraw the inquiry if there’s nothing wrong on your end, and that prevents it from converting to a dispute.

Have transparent policies and clear descriptions

Ensure that your customers have access to the refund, return, and cancellation policies before and after the purchase. This could be on your website, checkout page, or even printed on your invoice. Also, having a hassle-free returns experience can reduce the likelihood of disputes.

Provide accurate and detailed product or service descriptions so customers know what to expect. This also helps to minimize any possibilities of disputes based on product or service quality.

Send order confirmation and status updates

Sending confirmation emails, shipping notifications, and tracking details keep them updated on the status of their purchases. This helps avoid misunderstandings and prevents any miscommunication.

Use recognizable statement descriptors

Clear and recognizable statement descriptors are important as they help cardholders easily identify the business on their bank or credit card statements. By providing recognizable business names, misunderstandings are minimized, leading to fewer disputes.

Keep a record of everything

Keep a detailed record of all transactions, receipts, written or email correspondence, and proof of service delivery. These can be submitted as compelling evidence when an inquiry is open, and make sure your payment is not disputed.