Hannah Blackburn is the Co-founder and Director of The Hawker’s Club, an eCommerce consultancy that helps brands navigate marketplace challenges, recover lost revenue, and improve profitability across Amazon and other platforms. In her role, Hannah advises sellers and vendors on Vendor Central, chargeback recovery, and marketplace operations. Before co-founding The Hawker’s Club, she worked at Amazon in vendor operations, including in-stock management and profitability. She specializes in helping brands understand and optimize complex eCommerce systems.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [1:20] Hannah Blackburn shares her journey from Amazon to founding The Hawker’s Club and helping brands grow
• [2:16] What brands need to understand about Amazon chargebacks and the challenges they create for vendors
• [4:23] How Amazon’s evolving processes are making chargeback management more complex for sellers
• [6:39] Hannah discusses why chargebacks are becoming a bigger focus for brands looking to protect profitability
• [8:32] Managing the chargeback dispute process
• [11:29] The chargebacks brands should prioritize first
• [17:12] Hannah shares strategies for identifying the operational issues behind recurring chargebacks
• [26:30] Where brands should start when evaluating chargebacks and opportunities for revenue recovery

In this episode…

Managing Amazon chargebacks has become a growing challenge for brands as marketplace processes evolve and profitability remains a priority. Vendors need the right systems and strategies to understand charges, respond effectively, and protect their margins. So how can brands navigate Amazon’s evolving chargeback landscape?

The key is creating a proactive process to understand, manage, and recover from chargebacks before they impact profitability. Hannah Blackburn, an expert in Amazon vendor operations and chargeback recovery, explains how brands can identify opportunities, strengthen dispute strategies, and build processes that protect margins. Hannah emphasizes the importance of using accurate data, submitting strong evidence, and addressing operational issues at their source to improve long-term performance. With the right approach, chargeback management can become a more effective part of a brand’s marketplace strategy.

In this episode of The Digital Deep Dive, Aaron Conant chats with Hannah Blackburn, Co-founder and Director of The Hawker’s Club, about updates to Amazon’s chargeback process. Hannah discusses chargeback trends, dispute strategies, reporting challenges, and ways brands can recover lost revenue. She also shares insights into preventing future issues through stronger processes and better operational visibility.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Aaron Conant on LinkedIn
• BWG Connect
• Hannah Blackburn on LinkedIn
• The Hawkers Club

Quotable Moments:

• “I think that there is an issue where they're trying to make it easier, which is in turn making it more complex.”
• “Most people don't know this, but you can dispute a charge from the moment it's levied.”
• “Chargebacks has to be something that is part of everything that you do every day.”
• “I always say to people that you have to essentially … start running as if you're on a treadmill, and then never stop.”
• “If you don't know where that evidence is, it can significantly slow you down because now disputes without the right evidence are order rejected.”

Action Steps:

1. Build a proactive chargeback management process: Staying ahead of Amazon chargebacks helps brands identify issues early, recover lost revenue, and prevent small problems from becoming larger profitability challenges.
2. Review Amazon reports regularly: Monitoring all available reports helps brands uncover missed chargebacks, track performance issues, and understand where recovery opportunities exist.
3. Gather strong evidence before disputing charges: Submitting clear documentation and relevant proof improves the chances of successful disputes and helps brands address Amazon’s requirements more effectively.
4. Address operational issues at the source: Identifying root causes like process changes, ASN issues, or fulfillment errors helps brands reduce recurring chargebacks and improve marketplace performance.
5. Prioritize the chargebacks with the biggest financial impact: Focusing resources on high-cost issues allows brands to maximize recovery efforts and avoid spending time on lower-value disputes.

About BWG Connect...

BWG Connect provides executive strategy and networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. We network and knowledge share together to better understand and adapt to the newest trends, strategies, and pain points shaping growth in the digital space. BWG Connect, in conjunction with BWG Strategy, has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

In addition, we have had 1x1 conversations with over 5,000 brands and have a real-time pulse on what digital strategies are successful and why. This in-depth knowledge allows our team to operate on the cutting-edge and provide our clients with best-in-class guidance on how to win in the digital world. We have provided free consultations and strategy sessions for companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune-100, to enable growth, resolve issues and make curated service provider introductions that can impact your digital footprint.

We have held to the philosophy of providing high-level insights and actionable knowledge with no sales pitches in order to provide to our network the ability to listen, learn and act to improve themselves as well as their organizations. Our ultimate goal is to be the resource out there to help digital executives find the research they need to excel in the modern marketplace.

If you are interested in getting involved with any of our current or past events, you can find them here. If you are looking for help & would like to set up some time to chat with our team, you can schedule a time or reach out directly to Aaron@bwgconnect.com or Tiffany@bwgconnect.com.

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