Meet #teameNett. Five Minutes with Nick Tsimiklis - Chargebacks Manager
October 28, 2020
In a nutshell, how would you define your role at eNett?
I manage and support a team of chargeback experts who have years of experience in handling disputes. I’m responsible for ensuring that our customers are in the best hands when it comes to chargebacks, no matter the type of dispute or where it’s at in the cycle. This means that I spend a lot of time educating and growing my team to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge to be able to handle all dispute categories, without being limited to any one specific dispute reason or stage of a typical chargeback cycle. It’s my role to empower the team with the confidence and knowledge to get the job done, while making things as easy as possible for our customers.
What do you love most about your job?
I’m truly passionate about the success of our customers. That’s why I see each individual chargeback dispute is as important as the next one. I’m also passionate about our business and our products. By using eNett VANs, our customers can enjoy a level of comfort that their money is protected in the event of misuse, fraud and of course supplier defaults. It’s this level of confidence that makes me love my job and encourages me to instill the same level of passion in my team.
And the people I work with are a really, really great team that bands together well.
As a result of so many cancelled travel plans due to Government imposed restrictions on travel, chargebacks have been a key topic for the travel industry during the pandemic. What have you and your team had to do differently to help support our customers during this time?
As the Government imposed restrictions significantly impacted the travel industry, my team had to mobilise to deal with an influx of chargeback requests. Our main focus was to support our customers through the disputes process, as quickly and efficiently as possible. We did this by;
- Engaging the team: We ensured our customer facing staff were equipped with the most up to date information. We made ourselves available in many different time-zones to support our customers directly and conducted many training sessions where required.
- Increasing and maintaining resources: Onboarding any new starter remotely can be tough, but it’s even tougher when dealing with a complex process such as chargebacks. Fortunately, eNett has an amazing talent acquisition team who found ideal candidates with various levels of chargeback experiences, quickly. We’ve also supported one of our key employees in their decision to transition to work from home, on the other side of the world, to ensure we could keep our best subject matter experts onboard to help with the huge task at hand.
- Automation: We established a chargeback working group to support the function effectively so that we were properly supported when the influx of chargebacks hit. This group consisted of senior decision makers to assist in the prioritisation of streamlining the disputes process and led the charge in improving any back-of-house functionality that we required along the way.
This was a spectacular effort. Incredibly, our team has successfully processed around three years’ worth of chargebacks in just the past few months alone.
Do things seem to be slowing down in the world of chargebacks?
Yes, they are slowing but not stopped. And now, as we begin to emerge out from the other side of the influx in chargebacks that we’ve experienced in 2020, we’re dealing with the next phase; arbitration chargebacks. So, a current focus of ours is advising and supporting our customers through this next phase of the disputes process.
On a more personal note, Melbourne, where you live, has endured one of the longest lockdowns in the world, what have you been doing during ISO?
Working! Ha. I love my job, and it has kept me busy during these recent months, which I’m genuinely grateful for. Working from home during this lockdown has also given me a whole new appreciation for my beautiful wife, and all that she does for our family. She is super.
It’s also been nice to get out with the family and dog for regular strolls together.
What is something you’ve learnt over the past few months that you will take into ‘post-COVID’ life?
It’s been great to see how resilient we are. Being at home with families while negotiating work in-between.
Having worked at eNett for seven years now, I’ve always known the value of the work that we do in the chargebacks team. But now I really know how much this part of eNett’s offering means to our customers. And it’s been really rewarding to know that I play a part in that.
Sometimes, chargebacks can be considered as that little part that no one really enjoys getting their hands dirty with, but everyone appreciates the importance of – and yet this year, people from all over were pulling together to achieve an amazing result. Everyone was truly in it together.
