06/02/2026
Chargebacks are one of those parts of the OTC process that quietly create massive headaches. On the surface, it’s just another deduction to clear. In reality, almost every chargeback points to a deeper process gap.
Think about how often this happens: Sales agrees to a 5% promotional discount on a call, but forgets to update the master pricing file. The customer pays based on the promise, the invoice flags it as a short-pay, and finance spends three weeks chasing a chargeback that could have been avoided with one email.
In my experience, trying to just "clear" these is a waste of time. You have to treat them like symptoms of a bigger problem and ask the hard questions: Why did this happen? Was the documentation unclear? Have we just normalized a recurring mistake instead of fixing it?
The strongest OTC teams don’t just process the claim and move on. They use chargebacks as signals to fix upstream processes before small errors turn into repeated revenue leakage. It's process improvement in disguise, not just a collections task.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of these could be prevented with tighter cross-functional communication early in the cycle.
Where do you usually see the biggest breakdown happening?