Whisper blocked unless user whispers first

While I agree with @BarryCarlyon for commands, (and thus why all my whisper commands require the command to be triggered by whispers), a use case that I would like to use but haven’t due to this issue is when my bot bans someone for acquiring too many strikes (posting links, cap spam, etc), i would like to whisper to the user why the bot banned them and how they can appeal their ban (which I handle using a whisper the bot command), and it would be nice to whisper them this info rather than posting it in chat.