Overview

The Payment Failed trigger activates when a customer’s payment attempt fails.

Payment failures are one of the most common causes of interrupted subscriptions and potential churn. Automating responses to these events ensures both your team and your customer are informed quickly.

How the Trigger Works

When GoCSM detects a failed payment event from the integrated billing system, the workflow will automatically start.

This allows your automation to immediately respond by:

• Notifying your Customer Success or billing team

• Sending a payment update reminder to the customer

• Tagging the account for billing follow up

• Creating internal support tasks

You can apply filters to control which failed payment events activate the workflow.

Trigger Filters

Filters let you narrow down which failed payment events activate this trigger. Both filters are optional and can be used together.

Priority Accounts

Limits the trigger to accounts based on their priority status.

Use this to create separate workflows with different urgency levels. For example, routing priority account failures directly to a senior CSM while sending non-priority accounts through a standard automated email sequence.

SaaS Plan

Limits the trigger to accounts on a specific SaaS plan. The available plan options reflect the plans configured within your agency.

Use this to tailor your response based on the customer's plan tier. For example, triggering a more hands-on internal response for higher-tier accounts while sending a self-serve payment update link to lower-tier accounts.

Required Setup: Find Contact Step

The Find Contact action is required so GoCSM can identify which CRM contact the failed payment belongs to.

The trigger provides identifying information such as the user’s email. The Find Contact step uses this information to match the billing event with the correct contact record.

Typical configuration:

Field: Email

Value: {{saas_payment_failed.ownerEmail}}

Once the contact is found, all subsequent actions in the workflow can be applied to the correct customer.

How to Build a Workflow Using This Trigger

1. Create a new workflow

2. Select Payment Failed as the trigger

3. Add the Find Contact action step

4. Map the Email field using the trigger variable ({{saas_payment_failed.ownerEmail}} )

5. Add automation steps such as notifications or payment reminders

6. Publish the workflow

Recommended Uses

• Notify your billing or Customer Success team immediately when any payment fails

• Route priority account failures to a senior CSM for personal outreach

• Send automated payment update reminders to customers on lower-tier plans

• Trigger separate internal alerts for high-value accounts versus standard automated recovery sequences for others

• Tag failing accounts for billing follow-up so nothing falls through the cracks