Definition
Dunning covers everything a business does after a recurring charge fails: retrying the card on an optimized schedule, updating expired card numbers via account updater, and emailing or texting the customer to fix their payment method before access is cut off.
Involuntary churn from failed payments typically costs subscription businesses 20-40% of total churn. Good dunning recovers 50-70% of failed renewals.
Example
A $49 renewal declines for insufficient funds on the 28th. The Recovery Agent waits for the customer’s typical payday pattern, retries on the 1st with a network token, and recovers the payment with no email needed.
How HL Hunt handles it
HL Hunt’s Recovery Agent learns per-issuer retry windows, applies account updater and network tokens automatically, and runs branded recovery messaging, with results reported as recovered revenue in your dashboard.