customer-billing-ops

$27

Guardrails

• Never expose secret keys, full card details, or unnecessary customer PII in the response

• Do not refund blindly; first classify the issue

• Distinguish among:

• accidental duplicate purchase

• deliberate multi-seat or team purchase

• broken product / unmet value

• failed or incomplete checkout

• cancellation due to missing self-serve controls

• For annual plans, team plans, and prorated states, verify the contract shape before taking action

Workflow

1. Identify the customer cleanly

Start from the strongest identifier available:

• customer email

• Stripe customer ID

• subscription ID

• invoice ID

• GitHub username or support email if it is known to map back to billing

Return a concise identity summary:

• customer

• active subscriptions

• canceled subscriptions

• invoices

• obvious anomalies such as duplicate active subscriptions

2. Classify the issue

Put the case into one bucket before acting:

Case

Typical action

Duplicate personal subscription

cancel extras, consider refund

Real multi-seat/team intent

preserve seats, clarify billing model

Failed payment / incomplete checkout

recover via portal or update payment method

Missing self-serve controls

provide portal, cancellation path, or invoice access

Product failure or trust break

refund, apologize, log product issue

3. Take the safest reversible action first

Preferred order:

• restore self-serve management

• fix duplicate or broken billing state

• refund only the affected charge or duplicate

• document the reason

• send a short customer follow-up

If the fix requires product work, separate:

• customer remediation now

• product bug / workflow gap for backlog

4. Check operator-side product gaps

If the customer pain comes from a missing operator surface, call it out explicitly. Common examples:

• no billing portal

• no usage/rate-limit visibility

• no plan/seat explanation

• no cancellation flow

• no duplicate-subscription guard

Treat those as ECC or website follow-up items, not just support incidents.

5. Produce the operator handoff

End with:

• customer state summary

• action taken

• revenue impact

• follow-up text to send

• product or backlog issue to create

Output Format

Use this structure:

CUSTOMER

- name / email

- relevant account identifiers

BILLING STATE

- active subscriptions

- invoice or renewal state

- anomalies

DECISION

- issue classification

- why this action is correct

ACTION TAKEN

- refund / cancel / portal / no-op

FOLLOW-UP

- short customer message

PRODUCT GAP

- what should be fixed in the product or website

Examples of Good Recommendations

• "The right fix is a billing portal, not a custom dashboard yet"

• "This looks like duplicate personal checkout, not a real team-seat purchase"

• "Refund one duplicate charge, keep the remaining active subscription, then convert the customer to org billing later if needed"