Cutting FRT from 3h to <1min at Open.money

When I joined Open.money's Customer Happiness team, First Response Time averaged 3 hours. By the time I left for product, FRT was under one minute.

The diagnosis

Most "support" tickets weren't support — they were users blocked by KYC edge cases the onboarding flow couldn't handle. We were paying response-time cost for product gaps.

The fix — three layers

1. Early risk assessment at signup: pre-flagged 80% of edge cases before they reached support
2. Macros + scoped autoresponders for the remaining stable 15%
3. Direct PM Jira escalation for the long-tail 5% — bypassed CS triage

Outcome

• FRT: 3h → <1min (99% reduction)
• Average response time: −30%
• Earned a promotion from Customer Happiness Officer to Product Experience & Growth within 6 months

Takeaway

Support latency is often a product problem wearing a service hat. If you're a PM and your CS team is drowning, that's signal, not noise.