How to measure
failed payment recovery.
The definitions, formulas, and rules we use to measure recovery and saves, count every outcome, and the mistakes that make a recovery rate look better than it is.
Definitions
Glossary of Recovery Measurement Terms
Every term Churn Buster uses to measure failed payment recovery and cancel flow saves, with the formulas for recovery rate, save rate, and natural variance.
The Four Outcomes of a Recovery Campaign
The four final states in dunning recovery, why all four stay in the recovery rate denominator, and how voided campaigns leave the cohort.
Daily Cohorts and Complete Cohorts
Learn how daily cohorts group dunning recovery campaigns by start date, and why no recovery rate is published until every campaign in the cohort has resolved.
Recovery Rate: the Formula
How Churn Buster calculates recovery rate: recovered campaigns divided by all campaigns in complete cohort days, with cancellations in and voided campaigns out.
Fundamentals
Failure Reasons
Why recurring payments fail, how soft and hard declines differ, when to retry silently before email, and how far to trust a decline code.
Recovery Campaigns
What a recovery campaign is, its four parts (retries, email, SMS, escalation), the card update experience, and what can or cannot be measured.
Campaign Length and Churn Recognition
How long a dunning recovery campaign should run before a customer counts as passively churned, and what happens with your data when you change it.
What Moves a Recovery Rate
Six things that impact a dunning recovery rate with no change to the recovery process, four dunning levers that drive it, and why retry timing can't be measured.
Analyze
Rolling Analysis
How to build a rolling recovery rate from daily cohorts, why rolling windows beat calendar months, and how to read the two resulting charts.
Natural Variance
How to calculate natural variance in a dunning recovery rate, read recent performance against your band, and use segmentation to narrow it.
Comparing Recovery Rates Across Periods, Tools, and Migrations
How to compare dunning recovery rates before and after a settings change or tool switch using consistent formulas, complete cohorts, and variance.
Practices This Methodology Rejects
Thirteen ways a dunning recovery rate gets distorted or stripped of context, each with the rule it breaks and the page that teaches it.
Cancel Flows
Two Measurement Frames: Dunning vs Cancel Flows
Dunning recovery is lagging and cohort-based; cancel flows settle definitive sessions in real time. Name the frame before comparing outcomes or rates.
Save Rate
Save rate for cancel flows: saved definitive sessions divided by all definitive sessions, with abandons counted as saved.
Benchmarks
Realistic Recovery Rate Range
Across Churn Buster customers, the median count-based dunning recovery rate is around 50% and top performers reach 80%+. Why accounts vary, and how to place yours.
Proving a Lift
How to tell whether dunning changes improved recovery, using comparable baselines, enough volume, and segmentation to distinguish lift from noise.