Anonymised client engagement · UK service business

From blanket chasing to customer-aware collections

A service business was losing days each month to manual payment chasing — with the familiar risk of wasting staff time and frustrating good customers.

The challenge

Invoice chasing had become a repetitive monthly burden. The team spent days sending emails and following up with customers, often using the same approach for clients with very different payment habits and processes.

What Woodlark built

Woodlark developed a categorised collections workflow based on historic payment patterns and agreed ways of working. Routine follow-up was automated and communications could be timed more thoughtfully around how individual customer groups actually paid.

The change

The team gained a more consistent, lower-friction way to manage receivables, freeing time from repetitive chasing while keeping exceptions and sensitive customer relationships visible for human judgement.

The system, in three words

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