Paused 2,224 Low-Quality Deals, Cutting Their Complaints 93%
70,439 deals · 460,263 contacts · 24.7% from merchant and deal issues (Feb to Mar 2026)
- Cut complaints on paused deals 93% (1,051 to 75 a week), ~50,000 fewer complaints a year.
- Cut refunds on the paused deals every week.
- Cut the complaint rate on deals Sales fixed by 36% (26.1% to 16.7%), and my CDPU definition became the number-one metric for Product's post-purchase squads.
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Low-quality deals drove a quarter of all customer contacts and millions in refunds, but Sales had no ranked, evidence-backed list of which deals to pause or fix, and four teams measured complaints four different ways.
What I did- Built a 97,778-deal database across 9 sources and had AI read the customer conversations behind 13,887 deals to explain each risk.
- Designed the Revenue-per-Defect risk score and took the report to the CEO in 7 days through ~230 change requests.
- Ran three pause and derank waves covering 2,224 deals, 2,221 of them backed by a customer complaint narrative.
- Measured results weekly with an impact dashboard, a Save & Fix audit and an unpause audit, and unified the complaint-rate metric (CDPU) into one governed company definition.
