Anonymised client engagement · UK service business

Chasing the right customers, in the right way

A service business was losing the best part of a week each month to chasing payments by hand, and sending the same reminder to good payers and bad ones alike.

The challenge

Every month the same job came round: days of emails and follow-up calls. And every customer got roughly the same treatment, whether they always paid on day thirty, needed a purchase order number before anything moved, or were in the middle of a dispute. The good payers were being nagged. The difficult accounts were getting a template.

What we built

We sat down with the ledger and grouped customers by how they actually paid, not by what the terms said, and by the ways of working the team had already agreed with them. Then we let the routine follow-up run itself, timed to each group's own habits. Anything unusual gets flagged, and the accounts marked sensitive never touch the automation at all.

The change

Routine chasing has run itself since March 2026. The time spent on it fell from the best part of a week each month to about an hour a week, and the average time to get paid fell by about two-thirds, as measured by the agency. The finance executive who used to do the chasing now oversees it, and the team’s time goes to the accounts that need judgement: disputed invoices, part payments, the customers marked sensitive. The client is a creative agency of nineteen people: the same one we helped see whether each job is making money. More on how we work with creative agencies.

The system, in short

PaymentPatternTiming

Collections — segments & reminder timing Synthetic data

Customer groups, by observed payment behaviour

Pays on issueNo reminder31 accounts

Pays on termsReminder at day 2844 accounts

Pays on a purchase-order cycleReminder at day 21, then day 3518 accounts

Historically slowReminder at day 14, call at day 309 accounts

Held for human judgementNo automated contact6 accounts