Duet Dating App — Customer Service Playbook and Operational Guide

Executive overview and service goals

Duet’s customer service organization is designed to protect user safety, minimize chargebacks, and maximize match-conversion by resolving friction quickly. Our operational goals are concrete: 85% First Contact Resolution (FCR), a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score of 4.5/5 or higher, and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) target of +40 within the first 12 months of a new feature roll-out. We measure these monthly and review them in weekly operations stand-ups.

To achieve those targets, we divide support into three tiers (L1 chat/email, L2 account & payments, L3 safety/legal), use automated triage to handle 40% of routine inquiries, and maintain an SLA matrix that guarantees premium users a faster response. Everything in this document is actionable: KPIs, staffing formulas, SLAs, escalation flows, costs, and customer-facing scripts.

Support channels, hours, and SLAs

Duet supports customers through multiple channels to match user intent: in-app chat for real-time issues, email for account and billing, phone for urgent safety incidents and enterprise accounts, and a public knowledge base for self-service. Channel mix is currently 60% in-app chat, 25% email, 10% knowledge-base traffic, and 5% phone. Our current monthly ticket volume is ~12,000 tickets (April–June 2025 average).

Operational SLAs are tiered by subscription level and issue severity. For Premium (Premium = $29.99/month or $199/year) users: live-chat initial response <90 seconds, email initial response <4 hours, phone hold time <2 minutes during published hours. For Free users: chat response <10 minutes, email <24 hours. Safety reports are escalated immediately 24/7 and acknowledged within 15 minutes regardless of plan.

• Channel & SLA summary: In-app chat (90s initial for Premium; <10m Free), Email (Premium <4h, Free <24h), Phone (+1 (415) 555-0130 for urgent safety/enterprise, hours 09:00–21:00 PT), Public KB (docs.duetapp.com, available 24/7) — safety inbox [email protected] monitored 24/7.
• Self-service: Knowledge base contains 180+ articles, covers 95% of billing and verification questions, and is translated into 5 languages (EN, ES, FR, DE, PT) to reduce repetitive contacts.

Infrastructure, tooling and automation

Duet uses a modern stack for scale: Zendesk/Intercom for ticketing, AWS-hosted storage with encryption-at-rest, Sentry for error monitoring, and an in-house moderation dashboard that surfaces accounts flagged by machine learning (ML). The ML model identifies 70% of problematic images with 92% precision and routes those to L3 moderators. Bot automation handles common flows—password reset, subscription status check, and refund eligibility screening—reducing agent time by an estimated 18 FTE hours per week.

For integrations we maintain API endpoints (REST v1) for account lookups and a webhook pipeline for real-time safety alerts. On-call rotations are published quarterly; SLA breaches escalate via PagerDuty and generate a CSV report automatically sent to [email protected] within one hour of the incident.

Staffing, costs and KPIs

Staffing is calculated using Erlang-C formulas with a target occupancy of 80–85%. With 12,000 monthly tickets, an average handle time (AHT) of 6 minutes, and target service level 80/30 (80% answered within 30s for chat), the model requires ~60 full-time agents across time zones. Typical agent pay ranges $18–$28/hr for in-house teams in the U.S.; outsourced partners average $10–$16/hr in 2025 market rates. Onboarding includes 40 hours initial training and 8 hours monthly refresh.

Critical KPIs we track weekly: Tickets per agent/day (target 40), CSAT (target ≥4.5/5), FCR (≥85%), NPS (target ≥+40), Average Handle Time (target 5–7 minutes), and monthly ticket volume trend. We also track cost-per-ticket; current benchmark is $1.75/ticket for blended internal and outsourced model, with a target to reduce to <$1.50 through further automation.

• Key KPIs to monitor: CSAT, NPS, FCR, AHT, Tickets per agent/day, Cost per ticket, SLA compliance %, Safety escalation response time.

Policies: refunds, chargebacks, privacy and safety

Duet’s refund policy is explicit: 30-day money-back guarantee on annual subscriptions (proof of non-delivery of advertised value required), prorated refunds on monthly cancellations, and a $15 chargeback administration fee passed to users in disputed payments if the chargeback is determined non-qualifying. All in-app purchases follow the platform (App Store / Google Play) policy where applicable; we maintain a chargeback response team to submit evidence within 7–10 business days.

Privacy and compliance are enforced: data retention follows a 2-year standard for account data and 30 days for ephemeral chat logs unless flagged for safety, with GDPR and CCPA protocols implemented. Users can submit data access or deletion requests via [email protected] or the web form at https://www.duetapp.com/privacy. For law-enforcement requests we publish a transparency report biannually and require warrant-level documents before disclosing PII.

Escalation, reporting and continuous improvement

Escalations move through a three-level matrix: L1 resolves 80% of tickets, L2 handles payment, subscription, and technical escalations (SLA for resolution 72 hours), and L3 handles legal/safety with immediate action and cross-functional alerts to Product and Legal. All escalations create a JIRA ticket for root-cause analysis and are reviewed in a weekly incident review where we apply the “5 Whys” and assign corrective action owners with 30/60/90 day deadlines.

Continuous improvement is data-driven: we run quarterly Voice of Customer (VoC) studies, A/B test response templates (reducing repeat contacts by 14% in our last test), and invest 10% of the ops budget annually into automation and localization. External benchmarking against SaaS dating industry averages (2024 SaaS CX benchmark) informs compensation and headcount planning.

Practical tips for users and for CS teams

For users: have your order number, email, and device OS ready when contacting support; use the in-app “Report” flow for safety incidents to ensure faster processing. Premium subscribers should call +1 (415) 555-0130 for urgent matters to receive priority handling. For refunds or chargeback disputes, submit supporting screenshots and timestamps within 14 days to expedite resolution.

For CS leaders: implement a blended model of automation + human review, set explicit SLAs per subscription level, measure FCR, and run monthly QA with a 95% sample confidence interval for training needs. Maintain a published public status page (status.duetapp.com) and a single source of truth for messaging to avoid inconsistent responses that increase repeat contacts.