---
name: customer-billing-ops
description: Operate customer billing workflows such as subscriptions, refunds, churn triage, billing-portal recovery, and plan analysis using connected billing tools like Stripe.
---

# 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:

1. restore self-serve management
2. fix duplicate or broken billing state
3. refund only the affected charge or duplicate
4. document the reason
5. 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:

```text
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"