The messy reality behind customer communications
Customer comms are never as simple as they look. Behind every letter, email, or regulatory notification sits a complicated mix of platforms, processes, and teams that are often inherited from mergers or built over years of change, some of it intended to be transformative, but never quite doing its job.
When everyone owns a piece of the puzzle
Many of these systems are legacy, with their own templates, formats, and tone of voice. Messages may originate from marketing, operations, customer service, or, in some instances, I’ve seen comms owned by tech teams – all have different priorities and ways of working.
The result? A rag-tag patchwork of communications that differ in style, tone, and even visual appearance. For customers, this can feel confusing or inconsistent. (but let’s be honest, some customers couldn’t care less). For organisations, it’s a constant challenge to maintain clarity, brand integrity, consistency and trust.
The compliance tightrope
This challenge becomes even greater in regulated industries such as financial services, utilities, or travel, where communications must meet strict compliance standards. Getting the tone right is especially difficult - messages must be accurate, legally compliant, and clear to the customer.
The FCA has recently highlighted that improvements to customer understanding are hindered by prescriptive rules on how information needs to be presented. We’ve all seen examples of where regulated communications were technically compliant but written in language that made absolutely no sense to a customer. The regulator’s focus on ‘consumer understanding’ makes it clear that meeting the rules isn’t enough - messages must also be accessible and meaningful. So, watch this space; it will be good to see the FCA remove some of those outdated, prescriptive rules.
It's not about ripping everything out
Anyway, let me get back to those legacy systems. I’ve worked on several big projects in financial services and more recently travel; from both a brand and communications perspective, it seems obvious - but the solution often lies in collaboration - bringing together brand, customer service, and technology teams to establish clear principles that work across all platforms (it helps to have a good friend in compliance too!).
This means creating language guidelines that strike a balance between clarity and compliance, and designing systems that ensure visual and tonal consistency, even when multiple legacy platforms are involved. It’s not always about replacing systems wholesale; it’s about aligning what exists, so every communication feels coherent, purposeful, and genuinely helpful to the person receiving it.
What actually matters
Good communication isn’t just about what you say - it’s about how you say it, where it comes from, and how it makes people feel. After years of untangling these challenges, I know it's rarely a quick fix - but it's always worth getting right, it builds customer trust, you never know they might even look forward to reading your stuff!
We're here if you need a critical eye on your customer comms or just pointing in the right direction.
