Sep 14, 2025
Fix your broken flows (without waiting for engineering)
Christophe Barre
co-founder of Tandem
Operations, support, and product teams are solving user friction themselves. Here's how to stop playing ticket whack-a-mole and actually fix what's broken.
Hey – Christophe here,
Every product has dozens of broken flows. Complex integrations. Confusing configurations. Hard multi-step processes. Bugs.
Not one person knows about all those issues, but most of the time someone knows and is impacted by those.
So why aren't they fixed? One word, tradeoff. Packed roadmaps and critical features to ship, engineering can and will never get to them.
The issues is that these leaks compound: burnt-out support teams, lost activation, poor adoption, higher churn.
What if you could fix them without touching the roadmap? Without adding headcount? What if you could cut tickets by 90%?
You can. I'll show you how with Tandem.
The hidden cost of a thousand cuts
One client = 1,800 tickets last month. $20 per ticket. That's $36K/month in direct support costs.
But here's the kicker - spread across 47 different flows. Integration setup (38). Permission errors (42). CSV imports (31). API configs (29). Nothing hits "critical" threshold for engineering.
So each team builds workarounds:
Support writes macros
Ops documents manual processes
Success adds Loom videos
CSMs do "quick calls"
PMMs builds walkthroughs
CX writes 10-page guides
Real cost: $36K in tickets + $50K in workarounds + churn since those methods often do not work
$86K/month bleeding through paper cuts. Over $1M/year.
The reality: Your non-technical teams already know what needs fixing. They just can't implement efficient solutions.
The framework: Deploy Tandem, not engineers
Here are 2 examples we fixed. These are typical for accounting integrations, but the same problems plague any complex software: CRM migrations, marketing automation, HR systems, inventory management, billing platforms - anywhere users configure, map, or integrate.
Problem 1: Users can't map their accounting tool alone
Before: Users can't map accounts correctly → confused → tickets → manual setup by ops
Attempted fix: More documentation (nobody read it)
With Tandem: AI understands their accounting structure and does correct mappings in-context
Result: Users self-serve, support handles real problems
Problem 2: Users go to support if their receipt validation fails
Before: Users upload receipts → get cryptic error → don't understand why → ticket
Attempted fix: Better error messages (still confusing)
With Tandem: AI explains exactly what's wrong with their specific receipt and how to fix it
Result: Tickets deflected, support & ops team freed up
Notice what didn't happen? No engineering sprints. No code changes. No roadmap disruption.
Your teams can ship fixes today
The pattern: Find friction → Deploy Tandem → Measure ticket drop.
We're seeing 40-80% ticket reductions across onboarding, configuration, and setup flows. The teams closest to the pain are finally able to fix it.
Do this right now:
Ask your support lead: "What's the #1 thing users get stuck on?"
Ask your ops team: "What do you manually configure most often?"
Ask your CSM team: "Where do new users always need hand-holding?"
Those answers? That's your fix list.
Send us today your broken flow and we'll show you how to fix it!
Cheers,
Christophe