Our subscription business has grown to 3,500 active contracts and manual renewal processing is becoming unsustainable. We’re evaluating CloudSuite’s Workflow Engine to automate renewals but concerned about losing the human touch for at-risk customers.
Currently our team reviews every renewal 45 days out, checking payment history and customer health scores before sending renewal notices. This catches problems early but takes 15-20 hours per week. Workflow automation could handle standard renewals automatically, but I worry about edge cases - failed payments, contract modifications, pricing changes.
Has anyone implemented automated renewal workflows? How do you balance automation efficiency with the need for customer health scoring and payment pattern analysis? What notification configuration works best, and how do you handle exceptions?
That scoring approach makes sense. What about notification configuration - how many touchpoints do you use? We currently send notices at 45, 30, and 15 days before expiration. Does automation change that cadence?
We use a multi-stage notification approach: 60 days (informational), 30 days (action required), 15 days (urgent), and 7 days (final notice). Each email includes a self-service renewal link. The automation handles the scheduling and delivery, but we monitor open rates and click-through. If a customer doesn’t engage by the 15-day mark, it triggers an exception workflow that alerts our CSM team for personal outreach.
Here’s a sample workflow condition we use to score renewal risk:
if (payment_failures > 1 || health_score < 60) {
route_to_manual_review();
} else {
auto_process_renewal();
}
This simple logic catches 90% of problematic renewals while automating the straightforward ones. We also built in a 7-day review window before auto-processing kicks in.