Case study
Citibank · Product manager, servicing communications · 2020–2022
Servicing Communications Strategy
Moved the top 75 servicing letters, 95% of mailed volume, to digital-first delivery, cutting $2.3M a year in mailing costs. Dispute alerts reached 70% enrollment across 40M card customers.
The problem
Each physical letter cost about $3 to mail and took 3–5 days to arrive. Late information can mean missed deadlines, fees, or negative credit reporting for the customer.
Nobody had a full picture of what the bank sent: which system triggered each letter, whether it was legally required or optional, or how it was delivered. Some letters were still mail-merged by hand and carried to the mailroom.
What I did
Mapped every letter the bank sent
Before I joined the team, I was the business analyst assigned to inventory every letter and its volume. Over about a month, I worked with business and technology teams to trace each letter's trigger, source system, and delivery method. I sorted each one as legally required or optional. That inventory became the digitization roadmap, planned into sprints.
Laid the groundwork for the Google Pay partnership
Google wanted no paper at all. The inventory showed what could go digital, what couldn't, and how the communication APIs should be designed.
Set up one review process for every letter
First, I worked with the letter's business lead on what had changed in strategy or regulation, and marked which wording we could rewrite. Next, an agency drafted it from a brief, over several rounds against our copy and tone guidelines. Then legal and compliance reviewed the final draft. Once approved, the letter went into a sprint to test and release.
Made digital the default
If a letter could be sent as email, it was, with paper as a fallback if delivery failed. For legally required notices, customers got a digital alert that a PDF was waiting in their document center. With legal and compliance, we decided channel by channel what could stop being printed.
Asked for push opt-in at the right moment
iOS requires opt-in, and a settings menu gave customers no reason to say yes. We put opt-in at account setup and inside the dispute flow, where the value was obvious, and added 12 new dispute-status alerts: status changes, requests for more information, and resolutions. Overall push adoption rose 15%.
Sent important alerts without waiting for sign-ups
We converted three subscription alerts to automatic push, under rules we set with stakeholders: the alert must need immediate action, the action must be possible in the app, and no more than three a day (fraud, collections, and subscribed alerts excepted).
The outcome
The top 75 servicing letters, covering 95% of mailed volume, moved to digital-first delivery, eliminating $2.3M a year in mailing costs. Customers get important information days sooner. Dispute notifications reached 70% enrollment across 40 million credit card customers.
Do the inventory before the roadmap. A month of tracing every letter as a business analyst made the digitization roadmap possible, and shaped the API design for Google Pay.
Make approvals a repeatable process. Every letter followed the same four steps, so 75 letters moved through review without each one becoming its own negotiation.
Ask for permission when the value is obvious. Customers ignored push opt-in in a settings menu. They said yes at account setup and inside the dispute flow, where the benefit was clear.