customer-billing-ops

Customer Billing Ops Use this skill for real customer operations, not generic payment API design. The goal is to help the operator answer: who is this customer, what happened, what is the safest fix, and what follow-up should we send? When to Use Customer says billing is broken, they want a refund, or they cannot cancel Investigating duplicate subscriptions, accidental charges, failed renewals, or churn risk Reviewing plan mix, active subscriptions, yearly vs monthly conversion, or team-seat confusion Creating or validating a billing portal flow Auditing support complaints that touch subscriptions, invoices, refunds, or payment methods Preferred Tool Surface Use connected billing tools such as Stripe first Use email, GitHub, or issue trackers only as supporting evidence Prefer hosted billing/customer portals over custom account-management code when the platform already provides the needed controls 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"