Recover failed subscription payments before they churn

When Chargebee reports a failed subscription payment, kick off a revenue recovery run. Trigger this workflow with a Chargebee webhook subscribed to the payment_failed event. The webhook payload identifies the affected customer and subscription (and usually the related invoice and transaction), so pull those identifiers from the incoming event to start.

Use Chargebee Retrieve Customer to get the customer's name, company, and email, along with their primary card on file. Then use Chargebee Retrieve Subscription to get the plan or item they are on, the monthly recurring value of the subscription, its current status, and the dunning details, specifically how many payment retries have already failed and whether the subscription is close to being cancelled by the dunning cycle. Remember that Chargebee money amounts are integers in the currency's smallest unit (for example cents), so convert them to a normal dollar figure before you report them.

Work out the at-risk monthly recurring revenue for this subscription and use it to judge how urgent the failure is. Treat higher-value subscriptions as higher priority, and raise a clear churn-risk flag when the subscription is near the end of its retry cycle and about to be cancelled, so the team can intervene before it churns.

Post a Slack alert to the billing channel with Slack Bot Send a Message. Summarize who failed (customer name and company), the at-risk MRR, the plan they are on, the reason the payment was declined, and how many dunning retries have already failed. Lead with and emphasize the at-risk revenue so higher-value accounts stand out, and call out any subscription that is close to cancellation so someone picks it up first.

In the same run, draft a friendly, personalized card-update email in Gmail with Create a Draft. Address the customer by name, reference the specific plan they are on, explain warmly that their latest payment did not go through, and ask them to update their card details to keep their subscription active. Keep the tone helpful rather than alarming. Leave it as a draft and do not send it, so a teammate can review, personalize further, and send it themselves.