The Challenge: Complex Integrations Were Eating the CS Team Alive

Spendesk connects with accounting software like NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, Pennylane, and Odoo. Setting up these integrations is one of the most critical steps in client onboarding — and one of the hardest.

"Every client has a different accounting setup, different chart of accounts, different export requirements," explains Mathilde Hamy, Head of Customer Success and Account Management. "Our CSMs were spending hours walking clients through the same technical steps. It's the kind of work that doesn't require strategic thinking — but if you get it wrong, the client is stuck."

The problem compounded as the team scaled down while acquisition stayed flat. Spendesk manages over 100,000 monthly active users and onboards roughly 100 new accounts per month. The CS team was expected to maintain the same quality with fewer people.

Setting up accounting integrations typically involved:

• Mapping the client's chart of accounts to Spendesk's export structure

• Configuring journal templates for purchase entries

• Selecting the right integration type and connecting the accounting tool

• Handling edge cases around multi-entity setups and custom fields

Each setup was slightly different. Documentation helped, but not enough — clients still needed hand-holding to get through the process without errors.

Impact Summary

• 70% reduction in support tickets on accounting integration flows

• CSM involvement fully removed on integration setup — the flow runs autonomously

• Hours of manual work per client replaced by AI-guided self-serve

• Zero engineering resources required — deployed with a JS snippet, no IDs or CSS tags needed

The Solution: An AI Agent That Knows Accounting Setup Better Than a Wiki

Spendesk deployed Tandem directly inside their product. The AI agent appears when users land on accounting integration pages, guiding them through the full setup — step by step, adapted to their specific context.

Use Case 1: Accounting Integration Onboarding

The Problem: New clients opening the integration settings page would see a list of accounting tools and configuration options. Most didn't know where to start. They'd open a ticket, wait for a CSM to schedule a call, then spend 30-60 minutes going through what was essentially a predictable checklist.

How Tandem Helps: The AI agent asks what accounting software the client uses, what kind of exports they need, and walks them through the exact configuration steps. If a client says "We use Xero and need to export purchase journals monthly," Tandem takes them through the template setup, maps the fields, and explains each decision point.

No ticket. No call. No CSM time spent.

"What's remarkable is that Tandem operates inside our product," says Hamy. "It's not an external chatbot sending users to help articles. It's right there, on the page, doing the work with them."

Use Case 2: International Wire Transfer Guidance

The Problem: International wire transfers involve regulatory requirements, document verification, and multi-step approvals. Users frequently got stuck mid-flow, unsure which documents were needed or why a transfer was flagged.

How Tandem Helps: The agent detects where the user is in the flow and provides contextual guidance — explaining what's needed, why, and what happens next. For repeat processes, users stopped opening tickets entirely.

Use Case 3: Purchase Journal Templates

The Problem: Creating and configuring export templates for accounting journals required understanding Spendesk's data model. Clients often got the mapping wrong on the first try, generating follow-up tickets to correct the export.

How Tandem Helps: Tandem walks users through template creation, suggests the right field mappings based on their accounting tool, and flags common mistakes before they happen.

Results: The CS Team Got Their Time Back

The 70% ticket reduction on accounting integrations wasn't gradual. Within the first months of deployment, the volume on these flows dropped sharply. More importantly, the nature of remaining tickets changed — they shifted from "how do I set this up" to edge cases that genuinely needed human judgment.

"We completely removed the need for CSM involvement on accounting integration setup," says Hamy. "A process that used to take our team hours per client now runs on its own. That's not a marginal improvement — it fundamentally changed what our CSMs can spend their time on."

The impact went beyond ticket counts:

• CSMs could focus on strategic work: retention conversations, upsell opportunities, relationship building

• Client onboarding timelines shortened because users weren't waiting for a call to complete setup

• Internal knowledge that previously lived in individual CSMs' heads became available to every user, 24/7

What's Next

Spendesk is looking at expanding Tandem to more product areas — particularly their procurement module (built from the acquisition of Okko) and in-product feature education for clients who underuse capabilities they're already paying for.

"There's a lot of what I'd call bureaucracy in CS work," says Hamy. "Repetitive processes that take time but don't require strategic thinking. Every one of those is a candidate for Tandem."

The Bottom Line

Spendesk didn't need another help center. They needed something that could do the work with users, inside the product, without pulling the CS team in. Tandem gave their clients the equivalent of a dedicated integration specialist available on every page, at any time — and gave their CS team hours back every week.

"Tandem is one of the few external tools that actually works inside our product at the level our team needs," concludes Hamy. "That's rare. And for the CS team, it means we can finally stop doing work that a well-briefed AI can handle better than we can."

"A process that used to take our team hours per client now runs on its own. That's not a marginal improvement — it fundamentally changed what our CSMs can spend their time on."
— Mathilde Hamy, Head of Customer Success & Account Management, Spendesk