Stress-test a dunning sequence before retry cadence, email copy, and access locks harden into what every failed payment will experience.
Dunning sequences fail when retries burn cards without a human path, when copy reads like a collections threat, when access locks collide with enterprise notice terms, and when "recovered" revenue is pauses that fail again in a week. A neat flowchart is not evidence.
What to put on the table
One sentence for why the sequence exists, the retry schedule and channels you will honor, who owns tone and legal review, and the rollback trigger if churn or support load breaks. Attach the draft emails and in-product notices, the card-retry rules, the access-lock policy, and the refund or grace exceptions finance will allow. If billing, CS, and legal disagree on when access ends, stop and reconcile first.
Name the decision you will make if the stress test finds nothing new, and the delay criteria if any message lacks an owner or a regulated disclosure.
Pressure points
- Tone theater: copy that recovers a card and burns the relationship.
- Retry damage: schedules that trip fraud filters or issuer declines.
- Access collisions: locks that contradict contractual notice windows.
- False recovery: payments that clear once and fail on the next cycle.
- Support load: messages that drive tickets your macros cannot clear.
Optional counsel seat if consumer protection or auto-renew rules bind the language. Optional finance seat if cash timing depends on aggressive retries.
How to run it
Feed Pingpong the draft sequence, retry rules, and open risk list. Early passes steelman the cadence. Later passes attack from customer, finance, legal, CS, and support seats. End with a pass that turns surviving objections into softer early messages, clearer grace rules, or a hold. Delete invented recovery rates and dual-counted "saves."
Ask finance and CS seats to price the churn behavior the new sequence will invite. If day-one language reads like a threat, buyers will escalate or charge back instead of updating a card. Write the intended tone ladder, the human-escape path, and the language you will refuse, then attack whether recovery still works under that discipline.
When the sequence coincides with a pricing or packaging change, force billing and CS seats to map every path that still assumes the old plan names or grace windows. Invoices, portal copy, and partner-managed accounts count. A sequence that looks clean in a doc while the portal still ships old wording will fail on the first escalated account.
Force a day-after narrative: what happens if a card issuer blocks retries, if an enterprise buyer screenshots a harsh email, or if support volume spikes on one ambiguous phrase. If those stories are stronger than your mitigation plan, fix the package before you ship. Related: stress-test a billing change, stress-test a refund policy, war-game a churn playbook, pretend you are the angry customer, and the war-game decisions hub. Process: how to run a Pingpong.