The Business Notifications Playbook
While these practices may seem obvious, experience shows they are often overlooked.
I have been dealing with different sorts of communications for the most of my career thanks to gigs in Digital Out Of Home, Paid Social, and other sorts of Ad Tech. I also developed and helped launching products for startups and corporate giants that utilized notifications as a form of customer communications in multiple forms and shapes. From marketing, advertising, and sales, to product, service, and support - I have seen if not all then most of it.
In this manifesto I share my insights about the not so fancy side of communications involving product, service, and support. I think they are almost impossible to fail but so many companies still find their way.
This manifesto is a collection of best practices for transactional communications and notifications, informed by my business experience and product taste. Use carefully at your discretion.
Transactional communications help customers achieving the best experience while using your products and services instead of trying to advertise and sell them. There is a thin line where both can co-exist but in the average employees' mind this difference is either very fuzzy or simply doesn't exist.
Why This Matters
The primary goal of business communications is to maximize mutual value in every customer interaction.
Efficient communications benefits your customers by:
- Bringing immediate value
- Providing a great user experience
- Positively contributing to CX and broader customer journey
Efficient communications benefits your company by helping it achieve its business goals with:
- Cultivating genuine loyalty
- Maintaining high customer satisfaction
- Ensuring true customer care
Below are guidelines to help any business to maximize customer value through communication.
1. Focus on Customer Value
Save them time instead of making them sift through emails or messages.
Make customer value the priority in your communication. Provide relevant insights, solutions, or information that benefit your audience.
Avoid
- Long preambles — get to the point.
- Marketing in transactional communications — leave that to marketing.
- Missing details — these create confusion and anxiety.
Do
- Structure your communications — make your messages easy to digest for a customer.
- Use appropriate formatting — blobs of text are hard to navigate.
2. Notification Is Often an Action
Make acting on notifications effortless.
If it can be done in one click, ensure it is. Prioritize UX over excuses.
Avoid
- Verbose instructions — Deep-link to the right place for seamless action.
- Small, hard-to-find links — use accessible buttons or links in prominent spots, and DO NOT hesitate to duplicate them for accessibility.
- Demanding action without providing clear steps — this causes anxiety and frustration.
Do
- Make actions one click away — it is challenging but worth it.
- Enable actions from any channel — whether via pop-ups or email, ensure customers can act easily.
- Provide spaced follow-ups and reminders — help customers stay on track.
3. Be Concise. Use Clear Language.
Do not dilute the message.
Avoid
- Wasting customers’ time with unnecessary marketing, irrelevant content, or bad writing.
Do
- Use clear and simple language. — Write as you would speak, making necessary adjustments for clarity..
- Clarity, good writing, and compliance are key. If unsure or lacking skills — ask AI for help.
Hereto and therefore I confirm, that this invaluable peace of advice works to the greatest extend to achieve and progress our synergies to the next level of business and not only communications for aforementioned company and its respective representatives bound with fiduciary responsibility to their customers. By the way, we will soon release the best version of our latest product! Feel free to check it out!
I hope you've got what I mean. BE CONCISE.
4. Empathize with Your Recipient
Remember: customers do not know all the context you do.
Avoid
- Sending notifications to the wrong audience — this wastes time and adds to support workloads.
- Missing key details, actions, or next steps — even if there’s nothing to do and the only action is to stay informed, say so. This reduces confusion.
- Complicated feedback processes — make it easy for customers to report issues directly to the right people. Especially if you are huge enterprise.
Do
- Put yourself in the customer’s shoes — forget what you know and approach the message as a first-timer.
- Show your message to a colleague from a different area — get their feedback. Do you now see any gaps?
- Help customers achieve their goals quickly and easily — business apps must focus on efficiency. Don’t steal time.
5. Bring Vital Details
Be detail-oriented.
Do not excuse leaving out critical information that impacts customer decisions or actions. IDs, SKUs, GTINs, MPNs, references, time frames, action points, deadlines, instances, reasons, accounts, inventory numbers, , whatever it is about - it should be there front and forward.
6. Link Deep. Guide to a Solution.
Teleport them to success.
Avoid
- Do not explain — guide instead.
Go to this App, change this setting, switch to another App, activate this feature, then go to Admin Portal... (etc.)
Sounds familiar? Instead of doing this, link directly to the application, section, or page. This creates a seamless experience.
Do
- Design your process with notifications in mind — make them part of the user journey.
7. Let Customers Unsubscribe. Make It Easy.
This is a golden standard in business communications.
Subscription pains mostly apply to marketing, promotions, and social communications. Transactional notifications, although less affected, may also need attention, such as when roles change, employees leave, customers switch contacts, or acquisitions happen.
Avoid
- Forcing customers to contact support to unsubscribe — try it yourself, and you will see how frustrating it is.
- Sending customers to irrelevant tools — standard footers and headers often fail.
- Sending customers to a huge settings dashboard with no guidance — if it takes more than a minute to find the right option, we have failed.
Do
- Provide an unsubscribe or at least feedback link somewhere close to the header — essential for marketing notifications, good taste for transactional.
- Own your subscription logic — adapt it to customer needs. Especially if you are big and complex inside.
- Avoid generic support at all costs — if unavoidable, provide clear guidance on what exactly to do, what information to provide, anything that would help handling subscription logic relatively easy. GDPR, you know...
- Temporary concierge subscription solutions are better than none — use them if applicable.
Subscriptions is a separate topic and deserves its own playbook. Based on my research there is no "one size fits all" solution. For large multi-product organizations I would recommend divide and conquer approach instead of anything centralized. Same as notifications, subscriptions are deeply contextual and nuanced. They quickly stop making sense when taken on out to a something "centralized". For E-commerce, Sales, Community management, Support, or any other organizational domains the logic is often different if not orthogonal - marrying it an unrewarding task.
8. Tell Customers Who You Are
If support is inevitable, make sure customers know who is responsible. It is simply good etiquette, isn’t it?.
Don not expect customer to know who is responsible for provisioning notifications, and who is for support, or invoicing, or renewals, or...
9. Keep Transactional Notifications Docused on Utility, Not Promotion
We all very well know how our amazing products help dear customers — SO DO THEY.
This is a cardinal sin of loyal corporate employees. Keep transactional notifications focused on their purpose.
10. Clean Up Your Recipient Data
People change roles, teams, and contact details.
Do
- Provide self-service capabilities to let customers help you — we all know this is a tedious task for you, but not for them.
Keep your recipient lists fresh. Ask your customer's to contribute.
11. Have Design Guidelines and Follow Them
Be recognizable. Let no one confuse your notifications with anyone else”
Unified design builds trust and brand recognition. Email and online notifications should follow unified and recognizable design guidelines.
12. Perfection Is Not Attainable
Perfection is hard.
However many improvements cost nothing and show that we care.
Many companies and their products are at different stages of their life cycle, with different goals and budgets. Multiple items on this list will cost you nothing but show that you care. You don’t need to be perfect, but always bring your best for SAP's success.
13. Be a Communication Champion
Lead the charge of improvements to customer communications in your company.
Speak up when things go wrong. Give timely feedback to help others improve their communications.
14. Security, Confidentiality, and Compliance Are Non-Negotiable
Compliance is a top priority.
Stick to the rules, always. Errors here can be costly.
Ask your company's legal, privacy, security departments if in doubt. Have you done those mandatory trainings by the way?
15. Voila! You have Made Your Company’s Notifications Better
Thanks to you, our notifications shine!
This document is created to evolve thanks to your learning, experience, and observations while providing best-in-class notifications to our company's customers. Please give feedback, contribute back, and share your wisdom with peers while we shape together how our company does customer notifications and communications.