All use cases

Collect / Recover

In-conversation bill payment and plans (services/utility)

The energy bill is overdue and the call centre is closed — the customer settles it in chat, on a secure payment page, or splits it into a plan, in minutes.

Next best thingBehavioral triggerRisk triggerChatVoiceFintechSubscription

What it does

Recurring services bills — energy, water, broadband, mobile — arrive every cycle, and a customer who is ready to pay should never have to wait for office hours or sit through an IVR to do it. A customer who is short this month usually won't admit it to a phone menu either; the bill just ages quietly into arrears and toward disconnection. The agent resolves both in one conversation: it verifies identity, pulls up the outstanding balance and any arrears, and either walks the customer to the provider's secure hosted payment page or splits the bill into an installment plan within policy. The agent orchestrates everything up to the secure hand-off; the payment itself always happens on the provider's own PCI-scoped step, and card data never passes through the chat.

How it works

  1. 1
    Trigger. the customer opens chat or calls wanting to pay a bill — or struggling to: an overdue balance viewed repeatedly, a payment page abandoned, an "I can't cover it this month" message ahead of a disconnection notice.
  2. 2
    Decision. the agent verifies identity, retrieves the balance, due date, billing history, and arrears state, and checks the provider's policy for what it may offer — full payment, a due-date move, or an installment plan and its allowed terms for a consumption bill.
  3. 3
    Action. it lays out the options in plain language in the same thread. For payment, it hands off to the provider's secure hosted payment page. For a plan, it agrees a schedule that fits the billing cycle, confirms the terms, and makes the same secure hand-off for the first instalment.
  4. 4
    Follow-through. the moment the provider's payment system confirms, the receipt and schedule appear back in the thread; plan reminders are scheduled before each due date; a failed hand-off gets a retry or a human escalation; everything writes back to the billing system so the account state and any disconnection hold are never ambiguous.
Example
AgentYou're verified. Your electricity bill is overdue, and a disconnection notice goes out next week if nothing's paid. You can settle it now on a secure payment page, or split it across three monthly instalments alongside your usual bill. Which works for you?
CustomerSplit it, please — this month is tight.
AgentDone — three instalments, the first today, and I've put a hold on the disconnection. Here's the secure link to set it up, and your receipt and schedule will appear right here once it's confirmed.

Configuration

How the agent is wired for this use case.

Triggera payment-intent message in chat or voice, or a repeatedly-viewed overdue balance / abandoned payment page on a services or utility account.
Tools & actions
  • Billing platform · verify identity, retrieve the balance, due date, arrears state, and billing history; write back the payment or plan and lift any disconnection hold.
  • Payment provider · hand off to the provider's secure hosted payment page for the payment or the first instalment (the agent never touches card data).
  • Installment-plan engine · agree a schedule within policy, set the terms, and schedule reminders before each due date.
  • Messaging channel · present options, post the secure link, and return the receipt and schedule into the same thread.
  • CRM / case record · log the conversation, the plan, and the resolved balance.
Autonomyidentity verification, balance retrieval, and plan setup run unattended under judge gating; the payment is a money-moving policy class completed only on the provider's PCI-scoped hosted step, and plan terms stay strictly within provider-defined policy.
Channelschat · voice
Escalationa disputed charge, a hardship or vulnerability signal, a request outside policy, or a failed secure hand-off hands off to a human billing agent with the full context.

What you need

The inputs this use case runs on. Your channels stay yours; the agent supplies the judgment.

Signals

payment-intent messages in chat or voice, bill_due / invoice_overdue events, payment-page abandonment or failure events, pre-disconnection risk flags.

Data

balance, due dates and arrears state, billing history, installment-eligibility rules and allowed plan terms, identity-verification fields, consent state.

Guardrails

identity verification before any account detail is shown; payment completed only on the provider's PCI-scoped hosted step, never in the conversation; plan terms strictly within provider policy; confirmation read from the system of record, never assumed; human escalation on disputes, hardship, or pre-disconnection vulnerability.

Metrics it moves

  • recovered-revenueconsumption bills get paid the moment the customer is willing, including balances that would otherwise age into arrears and disconnection.
  • contact-ratedown: the steady stream of inbound payment and "can I pay later?" calls resolves self-serve at any hour instead of queueing for an agent.
  • time-to-resolutiona payment or a full installment plan set up in one thread, instead of an IVR queue, a transfer, and a callback.

Related use cases

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Compliant collections and promise-to-pay

when the consumption bill has aged into formal arrears

Collect / Recover

Failed-payment instant recovery

when the payment method broke rather than the customer hesitating

See it on your own customer journey

Bring one drop-off, one churn cliff, or one silent segment. We will show you what a proactive agent with memory and judgment does with it.

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