Automating Payment Failure Management

Managing payment failures by engaging manually is possible only for a small number of customers. The process however should be automated if the number of customers increases or when you need to target a complex cohort of customers.

You can automate how you want to engage with your customers in different scenarios using Auto Engagement. It allows you to fetch the desired set of customers (cohort-based targetting) and set the rules for engaging with them.

Let us see how it works and how you best can use it.

Adding Cycle Rules

If you are new to Auto Engagement Rules, you have the option to create a useful cohort with readymade Cohort Templates. These templates have a collection of dynamic fields that you can edit and configure as you require.

For example, one of the cohort templates says: "Payment risk is High and invoices with Active subscription had their last payment failed in the Last 30 Days due to Insufficient Funds error with transaction amount greater than $10000"

In this example, High, Active, Last 30 Days, Insufficient Funds, and $10000 are dynamic fields that you can click and select a different value for as shown below.

You can move to the Rules Added section and edit or delete the added rules.

If a cohort template simply fulfills your requirements for a cohort, you can use that and proceed. If not, the templates give you an idea of setting your rules by adding the relevant fields to create a cohort for your use case.

• Once you understand the usability, you can navigate to the top section and select the relevant field category such as Last Attempted Payment, Payment Methods, Payment Terms, or Email Engagement and then select the relevant fields from the Select field drop-down menu.
• Once you select the desired field, the Select Value drop-down appears.
• Select the relevant value from the menu and click the + button.

Here are all the fields and their respective values that you can add as a rule:

Field	Entity	Value
Last Attempted Payment Date	Invoice	Current Month, Last 7 Days, Last 15 Days, Last 30 Days, Custom
Last Attempted Payment Status	Invoice	All, Success, Failure, Voided, In Progress, Timeout
Last Attempted Payment Amount	Invoice	greater than, lesser than, in between, equal to, not equal to
Last Attempted Payment Method	Invoice	None, All, Cash, Card, Cheque, Chargeback
Last Attempted Payment Failure Error	Invoice	None, All, Cash, Card, Cheque, Chargeback
Last Attempted Payment Date	Invoice	Based on the defined scnerios./td>
Last Payment Gateway Used	Invoice	All Payment Gateway supported by Chargebee. Learn more
Dunning Status of Last Attempted Payment	Invoice	In Progress, Exhausted, Stopped, Success
Count of Payment Attempts	Invoice	greater than, lesser than, in between, equal to, not equal to
Next Scheduled Retry	Invoice	Tomorrow, Current, Next Week, Next Month, Custom
Primary Payment Method	Customer	None, All, Cash, Card, Cheque, Chargeback
Backup Payment Method	Customer	None, All, Cash, Card, Cheque, Chargeback
Masked Credit Card Numbers	Customer	Primary CC same as last updated and Primary CC not the same as last updated.
Auto Collection	Invoice	On, Off
Net Term Days	Customer	greater than, lesser than, in between, equal to, not equal to
Payment Risk	Customer	High, Medium, Low
Payment Source Status	Customer	Valid, Invalid, Expiring, Expired
Average Payment Attempts Per Invoice	Customer	greater than, lesser than, in between, equal to, not equal to
Subscription Status	Invoice	Future, In-trial, Active, Canceled, Paused, Non-renewing
Last Email	Invoice	Last Email Sent, Last Email not Sent
Last Reply	Invoice	Last Reply Received, Last Reply Not Received
Last Email Bounced	Invoice	True, False
Last Email Replied	Invoice	True, False
No. Of Emails Sent	Invoice	greater than, lesser than, in between, equal to, not equal to
No. of Manual Emails Sent	Invoice	greater than, lesser than, in between, equal to, not equal to

Adding a Reminder

On the Automation page, in the Reminders section, you can add reminders (emails) that you want to send to the customers who fall under the configured cohort.

1. Click Add Reminder.
   
2. In the Manage Reminder window, add the Reminder Name.
3. Select one of the following reminder options:
   • Click +Add Email to add an email reminder and specify the following details:
   • Recipient: Select contacts to include all the customers for each of the contacts at various levels of escalation. You can also select the customer's contact to whom you want to send the reminders.
   • Sender: Select a sender from the dropdown menu. You can choose between the company name, and other points of contact (POCs) such as sales point of contact(SPOC), and finance point of contact(FPOC).
   • Signature: Select the signature from the dropdown menu to include the signature between yourself, the company name, and other people on the team. Once a specific signature is selected, you can use the signature template variable in the email body.
   • Select an email template, subject, template variables, and column list to customize the invoice table in the email body.
   • Click Save.
     

You can know more about editing/deleting a reminder and disabling a reminder. Learn more.

Advanced Cohorts

Every customer is unique in the way they subscribe, pay & engage. Hence our engagement with them can't just be any more generic. While cohorts allow you to bundle up customers of similar criteria, it is also important to know how cohorts can use used on an advanced level to target a specific group of customers and engage with them effectively.

Following are the cohorts and their variables to be used:

Cohort Description	Cohort Variables
Engaging with customers who had a payment failure but had a higher transaction value. These customers cannot be treated the same as the one with a basic plan.	Customers with Active subscription, whose last payment Failed due to where the Last updated card isn't registered as primary and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers to inform them about their next retry date.	Customers with Active subscription, whose last payment Failed in the Last X Days due to where the overdue amount is Greater than $Y and subscription MRR is Greater than $Z and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers who haven't made a single payment to date against the subscription.	Customers with Active subscription, whose last payment Failed in the Last X Days due to <error reason> and payment risk status is No Payment and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers with the first invoice payment failed.	Customers with Active subscription, whose last payment Failed in the Last X Days due to <error reason> where the invoice failed was the very First Invoice and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers who updated a new card but did not assign it as their primary payment method.	Customers with Active subscription, whose last payment Failed due to <error reason> where the Last updated card isn't registered as primary and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers with a certain monthly amount at stake with multiple invoices unpaid and needs immediate attention.	Customers with Active subscription, whose last payment Failed in the Last X Days due to <error reason> where the overdue amount is Greater than $Y and subscription MRR is Greater than $Z and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with loyal customers to retain them by asking them to register a backup card while they start suffering failures.	Customers with Low risk, Active subscription, invoices with the last payment Failed in the Last X Days, with No backup card registered and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers whose card is about to expire to prevent payment failure.	Customers with Active subscription having their Primary card expiring soon .
Engaging with high-risk customers who fail at their Xth attempt while their usual average number of attempts is below X.	Customers with High risk, Active subscription, invoices having their last payment Failed in the Last X Days, retries are In Progress, the number of payment attempts is Greater than X , the average number of attempts is Lesser than X and the last email was sent more than One day ago .
Engaging with customers who had a successful last payment but still have an invoice with pending payment. In this scenario, we know that the customer is willing to pay & continue the subscription.	Customers with Active subscription and invoices having their last payment Succeeded in the Last X Days w ith ageing in X-Y bucket.