Customer service advice from experts and insiders
By Lucy Lazarony • Bankrate.com

You may be able to get a dispute with a credit card issuer settled over the phone, but it takes a little know-how and a whole lot of patience.

Here's what you'll need to know before you pick up that phone.

First off, it's important to understand that there are several different tiers to a call center.

Peeling the layers
To start with, you've got front-line call agents who are equipped to answer basic account questions. Senior agents back them up. They are more experienced and can typically answer more in-depth questions and deal more effectively with problems.

Specialist agents answer questions in specific areas such as fraud. They also help back up front-line agents.

Several supervisors oversee the call center agents and a manager oversees the supervisors. Above them, the office of the president is at the absolute top. Customer service reps in this office have the power to do whatever it takes to solve problems.

"Once you get to that area, you tend to get an immediate response," says Roberta Tamburrino, president of Customer Solutions Group, which specializes in training, staffing and consulting call centers.

Tamburrino once worked in the office of the president for a telecommunications company.

"Our whole objective was to make these mistakes go away," Tamburrino says. When you call a credit card's 800 number, there's a good chance you'll be speaking to a front-line agent. As long as you ask them a commonly asked question you'll be fine.

"Customer service reps are not necessarily experts in the areas that they answer questions on the phone," says Ted Iacobuzio, a senior analyst at the Tower Group, a research and consulting firm in Needham, Mass.

"They're working off automated programs that tell them what to say. They're being prompted by software."

Most card customers get their questions answered by front-line reps. As long as your question is part of the program, there's a good chance it will be answered correctly.

But ask a question that's not part of the program, and you may have trouble getting a straight answer. Ask whether a variable rate credit card has a floor or minimum APR and the agent may not know what you're talking about. Ditto for foreign currency conversion fees, which many banks charge when a customer uses a credit card outside the U.S.