Most businesses have no shortage of customer data. They know who their customers are, how they pay, when they tend to pay and, in many cases, exactly when a payment goes wrong. The harder question is what to do with all that information—particularly when a customer falls behind.
That makes collections less of a data problem than an action problem.
Automated intelligence can bridge that gap, using customer information to determine what should happen next and creating a more effective, individualized approach to collecting payments. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Robyn Burkinshaw, CEO and Founder of Blytz, and Christopher Miller, Lead Analyst of Emerging Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how incorporating AI into actionable reminders can enhance the payment experience for customers and businesses alike.
Moving Up from Basic Automation
In payment collections, basic automation typically follows a fixed set of rules: send a reminder on a certain day, make a call when an account becomes past due or retry a payment at a predetermined time.
Automated intelligence takes a different approach. Rather than simply following a schedule, it looks at what is happening with the customer and uses the data a business already has to determine the next best action.
That could mean choosing the right message, channel, timing, tone, or payment option for a particular customer or account. Instead of leaving customer data sitting in a database, automated intelligence turns that information into an active workflow.
The result is a more differentiated experience. Higher-risk accounts can receive a more thoughtful, targeted path to payment, while lower-risk customers can move through a faster, more streamlined self-service experience. In both cases, the approach better reflects what the individual customer actually needs
“It’s different when you’re talking to a customer who’s a day late than when you’re talking to a customer who hasn’t responded in three months,” said Burkinshaw. “Intelligence is going to pick up on those nuances to make the experience better for the customer, and thus make the experience better for the merchant.”
Differentiating Customer Experiences
Consider a customer with variable income. Another generic past-due reminder may not help them make a payment. What they may need instead is flexibility: the ability to pay part today and the rest later, use a different card, pay by ACH, or set a Promise to Pay without having to call during business hours.
“The notion of differentiated and customized experience is commonplace at the high end of the market,” said Miller. “It is what financial services companies talk about all the time in terms of surfacing offers for well-qualified consumers, or analyzing their transactions to see what next thing might be useful to sell them. The same set of technical capabilities should be applied to this particular use case in a way that drives not just incremental gains, but substantial gains in productivity.”
The idea behind the 90/10 rule is that roughly 90% of customers will do what the business wants them to do—make their payments regularly and on time. The remaining 10% are more likely to require additional attention.
Automated intelligence can help businesses keep the 90% moving through a streamlined process while focusing resources on the 10% who need more support. Just as importantly, it can help identify which accounts actually require that attention.
A customer who pays late every Friday but has never missed a payment should be approached differently from someone who has ignored every outreach attempt for three months. Those distinctions are easy to overlook when every account follows the same rules. Automated intelligence can identify those patterns and use them to shape the next best action.
“That’s the shift,” said Burkinshaw. “The future isn’t more reminders, it’s more relevant reminders, and it’s the ability to take immediate action from that reminder.”
Preventing Payments from Becoming Collection Events
A declined payment should not automatically become a collections event. The customer’s card may have expired. Their payday may have shifted. They may simply need to pay part of the balance today and the rest on Friday.
Automated intelligence can help identify what is behind a failed payment and offer the most immediate, realistic path forward. Instead of treating every payment failure as delinquency, it can help businesses distinguish between a temporary obstacle and an account that genuinely requires collections intervention.
“We don’t just throw it over the wall and expect our collectors to dial for dollars,” said Burkinshaw. “We’re giving them prescriptive data that makes them more able to make surgical decisions about the problem that needs resolving.”
That changes the experience on both sides. For the payer, the experience becomes less punitive and more focused on finding a workable solution. For the business, it can mean better use of collector time and resources, with human attention focused on the accounts where it can make the biggest difference.
“We continue to see use cases where people are sent to the principal’s office,” said Miller. “Nobody thinks that we should have a padded chair where you wait in the hall outside—it’s a wooden bench. It’s uncomfortable. But that’s not how you actually resolve the issue in a way that’s favorable to all the participants.”
Key Takeaways
Traditional automation gives every account essentially the same set of marching orders, regardless of the circumstances. Automated intelligence goes a step further, using the information already available to determine what action makes the most sense for each situation.
That makes AI less of an abstract concept and more of a practical tool. Its value doesn’t necessarily come from putting AI front and center. In fact, some of its most useful applications may be the ones customers barely notice.
“Over the next five years, AI is going to disappear,” said Miller. “You won’t even know when you’re using it.”
As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the business environment, automated intelligence offers a practical way to put it to work. Artificial intelligence may operate behind the scenes, but it can make the automation itself more responsive, helping businesses determine when, how, and where to engage customers in order to collect payments as efficiently and effectively as possible.
“The next chapter of payments isn’t about offering more ways to pay,” said Burkinshaw. “It is about knowing which option matters the most in the moment. What we’re building around automated intelligence gives merchants the ability to truly meet customers with the right message at the right time, with the right payment path, before friction becomes failure.”
“Let’s not automate failure,” she said. “Let’s automate success. Give customers the ability to succeed before we punish them for failure. This is the future of payments. Be in front of it. Don’t be behind it.”
