Kalle Uusitalo, Senior Dispute Investigator at BetComply, spoke to SBC Media about the complicated world of disputes within igaming. Uusitalo explains why disputes can be so complicated and outlines how having a specialist in your corner can help operators to minimise the damage caused by them.
Ah, disputes.
People love to file them, companies hate dealing with them. This is pretty much the universal truth across any industry.
Some of them are legitimate and the company is genuinely at fault, sometimes it is an individual trying to defraud a company for no other reason but personal, often financial, gain. Some companies do illegitimate things in hopes that people would not bother to complain. A properly done, impartial investigation will reveal who is really at fault and, regardless whose corner you are fighting from, an equal level of care and attention is paramount.
Disputes come in a whole spectrum of shapes and sizes, and despite how you slice the matter, we cannot escape the fact that companies have to, or at least they should, deploy resources to deal with them. However, the igaming world is a unicorn in the wildflower meadow of B2C industries. Yes, you are dealing with an individual’s money, but this also happens for example in fintech and banking.
What sets our field apart is that people enter an online casino carrying with them a beautiful thing called “hope”, arguably the most abundant currency there is. It might not be something patrons openly admit, but you will rarely catch anyone spinning a slot machine with a burning desire to lose all of their hard-earned shillings.
When the sandcastle of hope is washed away by an inevitable wave of losses, one cannot be blamed for feeling discontent. It’s called “gambling” and not “winning” after all. But even so, someone has to be at fault. Maybe the machines were rigged? Why do I never win on this site? It cannot be bad luck, the RTP says 95.48%. I have won nothing; I demand answers.
As the small, but very unhappy, crowd of users starts to overwhelm your support through every available medium, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to whom the Superstars in the Support, the backbone of any reputable company, can redirect these cases to? Because frankly, it is not their job to deal with this kind of mess.
For that, any company in any industry needs someone who has battle-tested experience, both the tools as well as the toolbox, and most importantly the willingness, some might even say enthusiasm, to deal with the issue at hand. You could even make a case that it is important to contain the issue and prevent it from spilling over to the regulator, or potentially even more damaging, the public eye. Half-hearted attempts can cause genuine financial damage to the company, and its reputation.
Admittedly, I don’t remember how I got roped into dealing with disputes in my first customer service position with the ComeOn Group, but I was immediately fascinated by the process. How thorough you had to be, how many angles you had to cover, how important robust terms & conditions are, how to build a concrete case that could not be penetrated from the outside.
Assembling a reply that was a guaranteed winner, every time.
And I am fully aware that I am very much in the minority as someone who seeks dispute resolution in all the industries my journey has taken me to, but it has also broadened both my tools and the toolbox. Something which many in a customer facing role would benefit from, under proper guidance of course.
That being said, while it is important to have the means to tackle investigations of any magnitude, it is equally important that the company has clear processes and procedures in place for escalation when required. This makes the process streamlined and easy, or at least as easy as possible, for both the end user and the company. The last thing you want is for a case to get lost, thinking someone has answered it already and now you have a regulatory issue on your lap.
Disputes should not be pushed to an individual who is woefully unequipped and likely unmotivated to defuse a negative situation and just looking to get rid of a problem as quickly as possible instead of solving it. And while it is not always possible to make the user happy, the right professional can always handle each case so that the company is covered. Unless you are at fault, in which case you, of course, do the right thing for the user. All that can, and should be, done by a true specialist.
Because when done right, that is the undisputed power of Dispute Resolution.