Polite AI reminder calls before a payment falls due

Why do pre-due reminders suit an agent?

A pre-due reminder is information: what’s due, how much, when, and how to pay. Most people already know and say so in a sentence. Some have a reason the date won’t work, and a few think the amount is wrong. That spread is what the agent is for. It gets through the routine calls, writes down the promised dates, and leaves the disputes and hard cases for your team.

The tone has to be right on every call, and an agent’s tone is set by its prompt. That’s an advantage for once. The same polite script runs on the first call of the morning and the five-hundredth, and you can read the transcripts to check. It’s still only as good as what you wrote, so write it carefully.

The other half of the job is what happens after the call. “Salary सात तारीख को आएगी” becomes a promised date in a field, and the analysis can pick the right message from your registered SMS templates, with the date filled in. If the customer only said “next week”, the date slot is reported as missing and nothing is guessed.

How do you set it up?

1. Write the prompt with the facts per customer as variables: {{product}}, {{amount_due}}, {{due_date}}, {{payment_methods}}. Spell out the limits: confirm identity first, never discuss the account with anyone else, never mention consequences you didn’t list, don’t take card or UPI details, and say the branch will answer anything else.
2. Add a pre-call tool that checks your system for a payment made since the list was exported, and a skip_call rule on its answer. Calling someone who paid this morning is the quickest way to annoy them.
3. Turn on analysis with payment_status, promised_date and spoke_to_customer. Add your DLT-registered SMS templates as a fixed list, numbering each {#var#} slot and describing its format.
4. Test it in the browser as a customer who already paid, one who disputes the amount and a relative who answers the phone.
5. Upload the due list as a campaign a few days before the due date, with a calling window you’ve decided on, a low retry count and a budget. Mark the account reference as extra info.
6. After the first round, filter the contacts that weren’t reached and press New campaign from these for a second round on another day.
7. Your webhook handler reads call.processed, stores the promise and sends the chosen template once missing is empty.

What should stay with your team?

Disputes about the amount, requests for a moratorium or restructuring, hardship and anything legal. So does every account that’s already overdue past the point your policy hands to people. The agent can’t transfer calls, so for these it promises a call from the team and notes it. Read the disputed calls in full; they’re often the earliest sign of a billing error on your side.

What rules apply to these calls?

If you’re a lender regulated by the RBI, read its circular of 12 August 2022 on regulated entities employing recovery agents. It says regulated entities and their agents must not call borrowers before 8:00 a.m. or after 7:00 p.m. for recovery of overdue loans. It also bars threatening or anonymous calls, persistent calling, and intruding on the privacy of the borrower’s family, referees and friends. It applies to commercial banks, all-India financial institutions, NBFCs including housing finance companies, co-operative banks and asset reconstruction companies, and microfinance loans are covered by separate directions. A pre-due reminder isn’t recovery of an overdue loan, but if you run both kinds of list, one calling window inside those hours is simpler to audit. Check whether later RBI directions have changed this for your entity.

TRAI’s Third Amendment to the TCCCPR, notified on 18 September 2026, asks every sender to declare software-placed calls, including artificial-voice calls, to its originating telecom provider in advance with the numbers it will use, and treats undeclared calls as unsolicited. It also describes service calls as giving a customer information about a product or service they have, and says these aren’t promotional and don’t need explicit consent. A reminder that tries to sell a top-up loan on the same call is no longer just a reminder.

What does a reminder cost?

On T1 a connected minute costs ₹1 with a ₹1,00,000 monthly commitment, plus ₹0.30 for Mirai phone calling and ₹0.20 for call insights if you switch them on. On T5 it’s ₹5 a minute, pay as you go, with both included. Prices exclude GST. You’re billed for connected time, and unanswered calls are free. The cost block assumes about 90 seconds connected, an estimate: “हाँ, कर दूँगी” ends sooner, while a promised date plus a question runs a little longer. Weigh it against the cost of a bounced payment and the follow-up it triggers. See Pricing, or run your due-list size through the cost calculator.