This project employed design methods to audit a pilot sales and marketing programme in order to understand how it was performing in the field and what factors were contributing to its success, so that the programme could be scaled  for national roll-out. The focus on customers’ points of view and their perspective on value brought critical insight that actually lifted the initiative from a $23M potential pipeline to a $116M one, and led to the generation of multiple new product/service concepts for the group to pursue. In effect, the project was transformed from a marketing problem to a design problem.

A process design approach was employed in the way that the design team dissected and mapped the bank’s perceived customer pathway and the actual customer pathway discovered through design research. These visualisations then formed the basis for redesigning the pathway to reflect a more desirable customer experience, and providing a blueprint for this new pathway to be built. While the project was originally intended to be merely an “improvement” initiative, the outcomes of research, mapping, and prototyping yielded opportunities to transform customer experience and innovate a new business model.

Design outcomes of this project:

1. •Fuller, qualitative understanding of earlier quantitative measures.
   

2. •Greater understanding of successful elements of the pilot gained through clarification and depth of detail of customer and stakeholder experience.
   

3. •Greater confidence in planning subsequent rollout.
   

4. •Informed decisions for call centre implementation.
   

5. •Visualisation of customer experience pathway.
   

6. •Articulation of the “wicked problem” behind the cross-sell initiative (that what had been characterized as a cross-selling problem was in fact a cross-branding problem, with far greater implications for the organisation).