KSBR’s customer comms programme

Our customer comms programme to improve KPIs, improve CTA rates and reduce call centre calls

In 2026, writing effective customer comms, whether emails, letters or texts, is harder than ever.

  • The cost-of-living crisis has become an embedded new normal. Customers go to real lengths to avoid unwelcome comms like bills and overdue notices, and it’s easier than ever for the wrong word or phrase to trigger anxiety.
  • Trust in many organisations, from utility companies to banks, has eroded. That means less patience with jargon, and more scepticism and cynicism, especially around price rises and unwelcome news.
  • AI is letting companies of every kind bombard consumers, raising the bar for what it takes to earn attention, and making people more alert to anything that reads like corporate boilerplate or a scam

Attention is the twenty-first century’s most valuable resource; no organisation can take it for granted. Put together, this means more chance of comms misfiring, adding cost and damaging the brand reputation, meaning great (not just ‘good enough’) comms are essential.

The benefits of our comms program

Preserve and improve KPIs

Reduce call centre contacts

Improve CTA rates

Better communicate brand values and character

A tone of voice and language guide for future comms

The changes we make: ensuring comms abide by our seven key rules

1. Never take customers’ attention for granted

2. Use the right frame (e.g. crucial updates aren’t read as a sales pitch)

3. Start from where the customer is, not from where the organisation is

4. Stay relentlessly focused on the one CTA or takeaway

5. Recognise there’s no average reader and optimise for this

6. Account for when, where and how people ‘really’ read your comms

7. Reassure vulnerable customers, so they engage rather than avoid

Our approach

Our process rests on one key truth: theory will get only get you halfway to great comms, but testing guarantees it.

In our proprietary process, we:

  1. Work with you to build possible framings, using behavioural science as a starting point
  2. Create mocked-up versions of each comm, addressed to a persona representing a key customer type. These make it easier for people to admit things they might not say about themselves (“I’d expect John would feel worried, given his financial troubles, and might not even open it”)
  3. Send different versions to carefully matched samples of customers
  4. Ask customers to complete a short sensitisation exercise at home: recording how they’d react if they received it for real (would they even open it), their main takeaway, how they’d explain it to a partner in one sentence, and how they think the persona would feel
  5. Run qualitative mini-groups or paired interviews with matched respondents to explore reactions and identify what needs to change
  6. Provide a framework for optimisation: the need-states the comm must serve, how well it meets each one today, and what an optimised version would look like

We can help on a one-off basis, or across a whole programme of comms

This can be done for a single, one-off project, but we’ve also worked very successfully with clients and their agencies on whole programmes, after which we provide a comms bible summarising all the key findings and guidelines.