National Australia Bank
Steered the Customer Experience strategy for Merchant Services at NAB. I was the sole Senior Service Designer designing ways to improve the customer experience and ensuring we measured our impact to inform future strategic decisions.
Jun 10, 2025
CLIENT
NAB
CLIENT
NAB
CLIENT
NAB
Role
Senior Service Designer
Role
Senior Service Designer
Role
Senior Service Designer
Service
Service Design, Customer Experience Design
Service
Service Design, Customer Experience Design
Service
Service Design, Customer Experience Design
Merchant Services - Snapshot
Merchant Services - Snapshot
Merchant Services - Snapshot
Problem
NAB bankers working at the Merchant Support Centre were finding it difficult to accomplish enquiries and tasks for customers, because of the complexity of systems and manual handling.
NAB ordered a third-party vendor tool that would hopefully replace some of the legacy systems, allowing NAB bankers to have a better experience handling customer enquiries.
Note: Due to NDA I am unable to share some of the artefacts I created for NAB, that holds sensitive banking information, data, processes and systems.
My play
Steered the Servicing team to think about the entire journey rather than a single experience. "What is the story we are trying to tell? How can we capture the beginning, the middle, and the end?".
Mapped an end-to-end blueprint of the Servicing experience to surface gaps, suggest improvements, and align the front and back stages.
Led research with bankers to determine the feasibility and optimisation of the third-party system.
CSAT and CES scored below 30% across various friction categories. Testing showed that the new tool was 'pretty', but bankers suggested the legacy systems were still easier to use.
Extra findings
Through interviews with bankers, we found that onboarding of new staff took an average of 12 weeks because of the complexity and amount of systems a banker had to learn.
We learned that 40% of staff dropped off during onboarding within the first 4-5 weeks. Out of 14, about 6 would remain by the end of their onboarding process.
For each customer inquiry, bankers used six different systems on average. Timeouts constantly occurred, and the 4–6 manual double checks sometimes affected SLAs. Human error was cause for concern.
Legacy systems had no feedback interface; there was no way for a banker to know if the update to a customer’s information had been changed.
Problem
NAB bankers working at the Merchant Support Centre were finding it difficult to accomplish enquiries and tasks for customers, because of the complexity of systems and manual handling.
NAB ordered a third-party vendor tool that would hopefully replace some of the legacy systems, allowing NAB bankers to have a better experience handling customer enquiries.
Note: Due to NDA I am unable to share some of the artefacts I created for NAB, that holds sensitive banking information, data, processes and systems.
My play
Steered the Servicing team to think about the entire journey rather than a single experience. "What is the story we are trying to tell? How can we capture the beginning, the middle, and the end?".
Mapped an end-to-end blueprint of the Servicing experience to surface gaps, suggest improvements, and align the front and back stages.
Led research with bankers to determine the feasibility and optimisation of the third-party system.
CSAT and CES scored below 30% across various friction categories. Testing showed that the new tool was 'pretty', but bankers suggested the legacy systems were still easier to use.
Extra findings
Through interviews with bankers, we found that onboarding of new staff took an average of 12 weeks because of the complexity and amount of systems a banker had to learn.
We learned that 40% of staff dropped off during onboarding within the first 4-5 weeks. Out of 14, about 6 would remain by the end of their onboarding process.
For each customer inquiry, bankers used six different systems on average. Timeouts constantly occurred, and the 4–6 manual double checks sometimes affected SLAs. Human error was cause for concern.
Legacy systems had no feedback interface; there was no way for a banker to know if the update to a customer’s information had been changed.
Problem
NAB bankers working at the Merchant Support Centre were finding it difficult to accomplish enquiries and tasks for customers, because of the complexity of systems and manual handling.
NAB ordered a third-party vendor tool that would hopefully replace some of the legacy systems, allowing NAB bankers to have a better experience handling customer enquiries.
Note: Due to NDA I am unable to share some of the artefacts I created for NAB, that holds sensitive banking information, data, processes and systems.
My play
Steered the Servicing team to think about the entire journey rather than a single experience. "What is the story we are trying to tell? How can we capture the beginning, the middle, and the end?".
Mapped an end-to-end blueprint of the Servicing experience to surface gaps, suggest improvements, and align the front and back stages.
Led research with bankers to determine the feasibility and optimisation of the third-party system.
CSAT and CES scored below 30% across various friction categories. Testing showed that the new tool was 'pretty', but bankers suggested the legacy systems were still easier to use.
Extra findings
Through interviews with bankers, we found that onboarding of new staff took an average of 12 weeks because of the complexity and amount of systems a banker had to learn.
We learned that 40% of staff dropped off during onboarding within the first 4-5 weeks. Out of 14, about 6 would remain by the end of their onboarding process.
For each customer inquiry, bankers used six different systems on average. Timeouts constantly occurred, and the 4–6 manual double checks sometimes affected SLAs. Human error was cause for concern.
Legacy systems had no feedback interface; there was no way for a banker to know if the update to a customer’s information had been changed.
Solutions and Impact
Solutions and Impact
Solutions and Impact
Impact
As a result of the research and analysis, I created recommendations for the Servicing team to uplift. I also informed the Head of Customer Innovation of the potential SLA risk with introducing a new tool without fundamental changes to it.
With the potential risk to NABs ROI, leadership could go back to the third-party provider and ask for ROI positive fixes before a full fledged rollout.
A few things sprang from this piece of work
Service Design was noticed by others in the Merchant Services team as a potential way to identify gaps in their processes, I was approached by 2 stakeholders who wanted to learn more.
Championed the Servicing team to make better-informed and strategic decisions on which tool needed to be updated or changed.
Because of the lack of clarity around measurement and on-going feedback loops. I designed a framework modelled after ExQual to measure Service Design metrics within a project.
What I would do differently
I had evangelised about metrics the entirety of the process, but it wasn't ever front and center for other teams. I would suggest implementing more CSAT and CES metrics in various episodes of the journey, identifying the gaps and friction in the journey rather than at a touchpoint level. This would help greatly with future feature prioritisation based on customer need.
Ability to test the third-party system with a wider audience and internal staff.
Impact
As a result of the research and analysis, I created recommendations for the Servicing team to uplift. I also informed the Head of Customer Innovation of the potential SLA risk with introducing a new tool without fundamental changes to it.
With the potential risk to NABs ROI, leadership could go back to the third-party provider and ask for ROI positive fixes before a full fledged rollout.
A few things sprang from this piece of work
Service Design was noticed by others in the Merchant Services team as a potential way to identify gaps in their processes, I was approached by 2 stakeholders who wanted to learn more.
Championed the Servicing team to make better-informed and strategic decisions on which tool needed to be updated or changed.
Because of the lack of clarity around measurement and on-going feedback loops. I designed a framework modelled after ExQual to measure Service Design metrics within a project.
What I would do differently
I had evangelised about metrics the entirety of the process, but it wasn't ever front and center for other teams. I would suggest implementing more CSAT and CES metrics in various episodes of the journey, identifying the gaps and friction in the journey rather than at a touchpoint level. This would help greatly with future feature prioritisation based on customer need.
Ability to test the third-party system with a wider audience and internal staff.
Impact
As a result of the research and analysis, I created recommendations for the Servicing team to uplift. I also informed the Head of Customer Innovation of the potential SLA risk with introducing a new tool without fundamental changes to it.
With the potential risk to NABs ROI, leadership could go back to the third-party provider and ask for ROI positive fixes before a full fledged rollout.
A few things sprang from this piece of work
Service Design was noticed by others in the Merchant Services team as a potential way to identify gaps in their processes, I was approached by 2 stakeholders who wanted to learn more.
Championed the Servicing team to make better-informed and strategic decisions on which tool needed to be updated or changed.
Because of the lack of clarity around measurement and on-going feedback loops. I designed a framework modelled after ExQual to measure Service Design metrics within a project.
What I would do differently
I had evangelised about metrics the entirety of the process, but it wasn't ever front and center for other teams. I would suggest implementing more CSAT and CES metrics in various episodes of the journey, identifying the gaps and friction in the journey rather than at a touchpoint level. This would help greatly with future feature prioritisation based on customer need.
Ability to test the third-party system with a wider audience and internal staff.
