Talking to customers: Assigning the right communications at the right time

With customer remediation, financial institutions don’t rebuild trust simply by making monetary reparations (though that is certainly key to happy customers); they do so with strong communication. Customers want – and expect – to know what’s happening, when it’s happening, and how it affects them. If organisations are late, inconsistent, or unclear with those messages, trust just erodes further, even as remediation work is underway.

Trust, timeliness, and the case for automation

Fortunately, automation is now available to safeguard against poor communications, making it possible for financial institutions to deliver messages that are timely, transparent, and consistent at every stage of the customer remediation process. Likely, most banks and financial institutions already have customer-centred communications plans in place, but many still rely on cumbersome and error-prone manual processes to execute them. This is what can create delays, duplication, and unnecessary complexity at precisely the moment when your customers are looking for clarity and reassurance.

The right automation enables remediation teams to take better control of the customer journey by automating communications across every stage. From the first notification of a remediation incident to the final outcome letter, you want a platform that ensures you deliver the right communication at the right time, through the right channel. The upshot means improved information flow that keeps your remediation on track, reduces complaints, and helps restore customer faith in your institution.

The challenges of manual communications

Clunky, manual communications can slow remediation down and introduce unnecessary risk. Delays in drafting and approving messages mean customers often hear about issues later than they should. In cases of ongoing financial harm, repetitive or overlapping updates can overwhelm customers with confusing, duplicate information.

Handling exceptions can add still further complexity. Deceased estates, deregistered organisations, or accounts with survivorship rules require careful wording that is difficult to manage consistently without defined workflows. Bounced emails and returned letters can also slip through the cracks, leaving gaps in your organisation’s compliance records.

These challenges extend the time it takes to resolve incidents, reduce throughput, and heighten regulatory exposure. Plus, thanks to ASIC’s RG 277, effective communication is now a requirement, not just a nice-to-have. Without technology to support timeliness, accuracy, and logging, institutions again risk eating away at the very trust remediation aims to rebuild.

Automating customer communications: From templates to touchpoints

The limitations of manual processes highlight a simple truth: execution is just as important as planning. A well-designed communications strategy can still fall short if messages are late, lack clarity, or are inconsistent across customer cohorts. Automation helps bridge this gap, giving remediation teams the tools to execute their plans with precision and deliver clear, timely, and channel-appropriate communications at scale.

Template building and personalisation

Indeed, automation makes it possible to build standardised letter and email templates that financial institutions can personalise across their customer base. You can streamline templates to remove jargon, use plain language, and stay under a page in length, for example. The technology automatically populates fields for names, account details, payment types, or remediation periods from existing data, ensuring accuracy without manual effort. This not only saves time, but also helps messages remain consistent across thousands of customers.

Intelligently assigning channels

Different channels also better suit different messages; for example,

• letters typically work well for formal notifications, deceased estates, or deregistered organisations
• email is appropriate for outcome updates or requests for further details
• SMS is good for quick reminders, such as prompting customers to update bank details.

Automation can assign the right channel based on enriched customer data, such as age, preferences, literacy, or accessibility needs, so communications land in the most effective way.

Fallback and exception handling

Automation also covers the gaps that manual processes often miss. If an email bounces, technology can automatically generate a letter and log each attempt at customer contact for compliance purposes. Likewise, returned letters can trigger workflow actions to verify contact details.

Adding necessary details

Certain communications may require additional layers of information. For example, some remediation letters may need to explain tax consequences, including whether a payment is a refund or interest, and the time period it covers. Automation can accurately and consistently insert this information and prompt customers to seek advice if necessary.

Multitouch, minus the overload

What’s more, with automation, you can strike a balance between keeping customers informed and overwhelming them. Technology can sequence and timestamp notifications, follow-up reminders, and outcome letters so that customers always know where their remediation stands, without receiving the same message twice.

Getting the tone right: Clarity, transparency, accountability

Keep in mind, too, that even though automation can streamline delivery, the words themselves still matter. Every communication in a remediation program carries weight, whether it’s an SMS reminder to provide payment details, a bounced-email follow-up letter, or a notice explaining tax consequences. Your financial institution’s tone should balance professionalism, accountability, and empathy, and this should be built-in to your templates.

Start with clear, plain language. Customers should never have to decode jargon or wade through corporate speak to understand what’s going on. Active phrasing – “We’ve identified an error, and here’s how we’re addressing it” – takes ownership and builds trust. Transparency means outlining what happened, what steps your organisation has taken, and what customers can expect next.

Equally important is how much you say and when. Overloading customers with detail too early risks confusion; burying key information in a late or overly long letter only frustrates them. Keep communications short, focused, and human. Nobody wants to read robotic-sounding copy or a magnum opus when a single page will do.

Benefits for financial institutions and their customers

When you assign the right communication at the right time with automation, both customers and the institutions reap the rewards.

For customers, the gains are immediate. They receive clearer, more consistent messages about their remediation incident that reduce their confusion and stress. They know what’s happening, when it’s happening, and what action – if any – they need to take. They see that the institution is taking responsibility and working in their best interests to do right by them.

For financial institutions, the benefits are equally compelling. Automation strengthens their operational resilience, accelerates their remediation program, and reduces the risk of errors that can quickly escalate into reputational damage or increased regulatory scrutiny. It also provides a robust framework for meeting ASIC’s RG 277 obligations, ensuring that communications are timely, accurate, and in line with the standards of accountability that both regulators and customers expect.

Perhaps most importantly, automation eliminates the manual burden of drafting, sending, and tracking communications. That frees up remediation teams to focus their time and expertise on complex or sensitive cases where the human touch matters most.

Automation as the new standard

Effective communication is at the heart of customer remediation. Customers want messaging they can trust.

Automation gives financial institutions the means to deliver on that expectation, streamlining routine tasks, sequencing messages with precision, and freeing teams to focus on higher value work. Done well, communication moves the remediation process forward and helps rebuild the relationship between customer and institution.