You think you’ve got everything set up. You’ve configured your traffic analytics, mapped your funnels using the AARRR framework to see where people drop off, you’re tracking changes in your metrics, and everything seems to be running just fine.

But, as it usually happens, surprises come from places you least expect. That’s exactly what happened to me.

How often have you opened your inbox in the morning and found a message from a customer saying:

“Hello, I’d like a refund because _____.”

Fill in the blank with whatever reason comes to mind.

“Because I’m not satisfied with your product.”

“Because I haven’t used your product.”

“Because I don’t understand how to use your product.”

“Because I accidentally purchased the wrong thing.”

And so on and so forth. Honestly, I prefer these emails to requests asking us to give the product away for free.

I’m not asking how you feel when you receive one of these. That’s a whole different matter. Take it out on a friend over a beer. What I’m asking is: what are you going to do about it?

The Context

You have a product. You have a customer who bought that product. Today, they’re asking for a refund. You need to decide whether to give their money back or not.

Your Options

1. Issue a refund.

The safest route. Don’t forget to apologize profusely, too. Just kidding. Sometimes this may actually be the right call to prevent the situation from escalating. Why? There are plenty of reasons. Sometimes issuing a refund is cheaper than dealing with what comes next.

2. Try to find out why and solve the customer’s problem.

Usually, this is where you should start. But keep in mind that the customer is probably quite frustrated at this point and may not be willing to cooperate.

I’ve received angry messages from customers claiming they had “paid but never received the product”. It turned out that our email containing all the necessary information had landed in their spam folder. A calm explanation was enough to settle things down.

3. Ignore them.

The worst option.

When you ignore your customers, you miss out on valuable information. And I mean VALUABLE TO YOU PERSONALLY. On top of that, it’s disrespectful and damages your brand’s reputation. Being a small business doesn’t give you a free pass to treat customers this way.

4. Do a little investigation.

And this is where we get to something that can not only help protect you from complaints and reputational damage, but also save you money.

Oooooh, Logs ;)

Let’s call it a Customer Activity Log. This isn’t some separate methodology, just a systematic way of collecting events related to purchases and product usage.

The details will vary from product to product, but there are some basic things you should always log:

  • Date and time of purchase.
  • What was purchased and for how much.
  • Payment method and transaction ID.
  • Any additional information (customer’s email address, name, etc.).

Now for the fun part.

Let’s say you sell a downloadable digital product (an app, a game, some kind of archive or file). You should log:

  • Whether the digital product was downloaded.
  • How many times.
  • Date and time of each download, and the IP addresses used.

Tip 1: To make sure your tracking doesn’t fall apart, use a unique download link for each customer.

Tip 2: Collecting users’ personal data is serious business, and you’re responsible for handling it. Only collect what you actually need.

Let’s take another example. You sell a Premium subscription that unlocks additional access to your content. Beyond the basics, make sure you track:

  • Whether the customer actually received access. It’s not great if a customer sees “Thank you for your purchase” after paying, and that’s it. It can be misleading. I’ll cover better approaches in another article. For now, at the very least, notify the customer by email and log that email event! Premium purchased → access granted → email sent → email delivered.

  • Whether the customer actually used that access. In other words, did they log in to their Premium account? Did they use the services and features that come with it? Log when, how, and how often.

  • Added a new feature to Premium? Log it.

None of this will make complaints disappear, but it will help you make decisions based on facts rather than assumptions.

The Decision

Example 1. “Hello, I’d like a refund because I’m not satisfied with your product.”

Check whether the customer used the product. They probably did, but verify it.

Let’s say they did. This is where your job as a PM begins: try to find out exactly what they didn’t like. This information can be extremely valuable. It may confirm what you already know, or open your eyes to something you hadn’t noticed before. Or it may simply be noise, because you can’t make product decisions based on a single unhappy customer.

Example 2. “Hello, I’d like a refund because I haven’t used your product.”

You’ve set up your Customer Activity Log, right? Now you can check what actions were recorded against the account or order.

By the way, here’s a funny story from my own experience. A customer told me he hadn’t used the product. I checked the logs — he had. Turns out he and a friend had bought the product together. His friend received it, but never told him.

Example 3. “Hello, I’d like a refund because I don’t understand how to use your product.”

Check the Customer Activity Log. Maybe they actually did understand how to use it, and the real reason lies somewhere else.

Just like in Example 1, it’s important to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps your product really does need better onboarding, a clearer interface, a more intuitive user flow, and so on.

The Takeaway

So, what can we take away from all this?

Setting aside problems with your product itself (technical, functional, or communication-related), a customer may be mistaken, may be dishonest, or may receive a perfectly good product and still not know how to use it properly.

You don’t have to issue a refund on the spot. Your Refund Policy, applicable laws, and payment provider’s rules come first. Your personal preferences come after those three.

Any email like this can provide a lot of useful information for improving your product.

For every customer who writes to you, there may be a hundred who don’t. They simply abandon your product quietly — what we call “silent churn”.