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Kodelyth ECC
Skill

customer-billing-ops

Operate customer billing workflows such as subscriptions, refunds, churn triage, billing-portal recovery, and plan analysis using connected billing tools like Stripe. Use when the user needs to help a customer, inspect subscription state, or manage revenue-impacting billing operations.

Invoke via:use customer-billing-ops
Origin:ECC

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"

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