Refunds reach support before the customer does

Finance issued refunds directly in Stripe, and support found out when the customer emailed to ask where the money was. Every one of those threads started with an apology and a search through two systems before anyone could answer a simple question.

The problem

What they built

Syncline picks up each refund the moment Stripe reports it, posts the details in the support channel and opens a card on the follow-up board with the order reference attached. A confirmation email goes to the customer from the support address within a minute, before they have thought to ask.

The flow, step by step

<ol class="sy-steps"><li><b>stripe</b> A refund is issued, full or partial, and the flow reads the amount in minor units, the currency, the customer email and the original charge description.</li><li><b>slack</b> A message posts in the customer channel with the converted amount, the customer name and the reason field, filtered so refunds under ten dollars stay quiet.</li><li><b>trello</b> A card opens on the Refund follow-up list with the order reference in the title, a three item checklist and a due date two working days out.</li><li><b>gmail</b> A templated confirmation sends from the support address naming the amount, the card ending and the five to ten day window banks usually take.</li></ol>

What changed

<div class="sy-table-wrap"><table><thead><tr><th>Metric</th><th>Before</th><th>After</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Where is my refund tickets per month</td><td>84</td><td>11</td></tr><tr><td>Median first reply on a refund</td><td>5 hours</td><td>under 1 minute</td></tr><tr><td>Refunds with no follow-up recorded</td><td>1 in 6</td><td>none</td></tr></tbody></table></div><blockquote><p>We used to learn about our own refunds from angry customers. Now the email lands before they open a browser, and the ticket that used to take twenty minutes does not get created at all.</p><footer>Marco Deveaux, Support Lead at Tidewater Supply Co.</footer></blockquote>

<p>Tidewater Supply Co. sells kitchen equipment to small restaurants, which means a fair number of returns and a steady trickle of refunds. Finance handled them in Stripe because that is where the money is, and support handled the customer because that is where the customer writes. The two teams sat six feet apart and still managed to be a day out of step.</p><p>The pattern was always the same. A refund went out on Tuesday, the bank showed nothing until Friday, and on Wednesday morning the customer emailed to ask what happened. Support then had to find the order, find the charge, work out whether it was full or partial and reply, which took about twenty minutes and started from a position of not knowing.</p><p>The flow inverts the order of events. Stripe pushes the refund to Syncline within seconds, so the customer gets a confirmation naming the exact amount and the realistic bank window before they have any reason to write in. Most of the traffic that used to arrive as a ticket now never arrives at all, which is the cheapest kind of support improvement there is.</p><p>The amount handling is worth calling out because it caused the one bug they hit. Stripe reports money in minor units, so a refund of 128 dollars and 40 cents arrives as 12840. Syncline converts it with the currency attached before writing anywhere, and the run history shows both numbers side by side. Their first template used the raw value and told two customers they were getting twelve thousand dollars back, which was fixed in about four minutes and is now a story the finance lead tells at every onboarding.</p><p>The Trello card exists for the awkward cases. Roughly one refund in twelve needs something else to happen, a courier to collect, a replacement to ship, a supplier to be told, and none of that is visible in Stripe. The card gives that work a place to live with a due date on it, and the board reports how many are still open at the end of the week.</p><p>They added the ten dollar filter after the first month. Small refunds are common, nobody needs a chat message about each one, and the channel had started to be muted, which would have quietly undone the whole thing.</p>

More use cases

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