DESIGN OPERATIONS PRACTICE
CATEGORY
Organizational Design
CLIENT
Capital One Commercial Bank
MY ROLE & SCOPE
Design Leader
Oversaw design team
Impact across entire line of business
No prior or existing design team
ACTIVITY SNAPSHOT
– Observational Research
– Service Blueprint
– Co-Creation
– Refinement of POV
– Forming a Team
– Socialization
– Continued Testing
OPPORTUNITY
Design and research as disciplines were new to the Commercial Bank overall and added immediate value wherever they were placed. During my work on special projects work for Commercial I had seen potential in dedicating designers to partnership within our operations teams. So much of customer experience is driven by or closely tied to associate facing products and services. It seemed obvious to me to place a team, but I needed to build a case for leadership across Commercial Bank.
APPROACH
I gathered mappings (customer journey, associate journey, blueprints etc.) from across our design teams within Commercial in order to provide deeper evidence in the need for designers within operations. The mappings were based on research conducted for various services and products. I then drove efforts to put this evidence into an official proposal and presented it to various accountable executives and leaders to buy in and ultimately sign off on resource reallocation and further hiring.
OUTCOME
The Commercial Bank now maintains a six person Operations Design Practice–the team has since grown from the diagram above since I left. There are even additional worstreams dedicated to associate experience products and services which was something I was pushing for prior to my move. I had deemed associate experience critical to the success of anything we wanted to shift from a customer experience perspective. I feel both validated and thrilled for continued efforts here.
Scroll down for a detailed look at the process and assets created throughout the project including :
RESEARCH
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
CO-CREATION
IMPLEMENTATION
TESTING & LEARNING
RESEARCH
From leading a Commercial Bank Onboarding Agile Train, founding the OneExperience Enablement Team, leading an associate experience group, and constantly advocating for change from an associate perspective. I pooled all that knowledge as well as surveyed teammates for all their maps for further context and data in relation to the space.
VARIOUS MAPPINGS,
INCLUDING SERVICE BLUEPRINTS
Over the years I have created many maps that depicted the importance of our associates, particularly our Operations Team. Most recently I had worked with our research team to refine the opportunity we had from a recent reorganization toward merging two lines of business.
Once again, it was clear that our Operations team would be fundamental in deep, foundational impact across our products and ultimately the customer experience.
Initial Working Session Looking for Product, Service Overlap
More Refined Map Used to Co-Create with Key Subject Matter Experts
CO-CREATION
Myself and a design teammate worked closely together, pulling in our respective experiences, research, and data within the associate experience space. We identified two operations lead areas in which we believed that our efforts and resources should be prioritized.
We looked at business value, levers to impact change, priorities across the space, our own design resourcing – levels and talent, and how to consolidate all this into crisp talking points with not only our leadership but our product and tech partners.
REFINED POINT OF VIEW
Coming out of our collaborations and sharing with our design leadership, myself and design colleague came up with a single paragraph (left) that outlined all our work – depicting the value in an associate experience team and how to make it possible.
We further outlined how we would organize a design team to support this model. We looked at organizing around products versus experiences.
Business Case Development
Engagement Model Brainstorm
LAUNCHING THE PRACTICE
Associates, particularly within the Operations Team, are the backbone of customer experience and I was thrilled to be able to pull together work I had done over the years alongside my design colleague and manager to make the case for an Operations Design Practice made up of three designers to start–the team has since grown.
INFLUENCING LARGER STRATEGY
I worked closely with the head of operations to refine vision, strategic priorities, principles, and foundational elements from input gathering across her leadership team. This lead us to a conversation about implementation and progress toward these goals–we had to reassess how we were currently working and change our engagement models to be successful.
REDEFINING ROUTINES
I also worked closely with the head of operations to evolve each operation leader’s team ceremonies and routines in order to effectively reach their goals. In parallel I worked with the individual workstream leaders to understand what they needed given their unique team work and refine engagement models as needed.
Separately I coordinated routines for the brand new Operations Design Practice to connect in order to exchange our notes around how we can support on another and our team’s efforts. We regularly looked at business opportunities that we could empower with the support of our brand new team.
Routine Schedule, Definitions for Bandwidth & Sense Assessment
FIRST MAJOR PRODUCT MIGRATION
I worked alongside our operations leadership team to transition 500 clients with over 1000 boxes to a brand new, evolved product for their checking needs. We called the project “Lockbox Modernization” and worked over a few months to: plan, communicate, and ultimately move all clients and their boxes with care.
We transitioned clients in waves according to the level of complexity within their setup.
I acted as a strategist in how we could use design to provide the best customer and associate experience possible, and service design thought leader in how we could use that methodology to manage the entire ecosystem of processes, people, and systems involved. This was a highly complex migration.
I also mapped out feedback loop planning for both associates and clients in the form of surveys and interviews so that we could learn from this experience. It was one of the most extensive product overhauls to date.
Wave Planning Based on Complexity
Service Blueprints for Communications Planning
EXTENDING LEARNINGS
As the Commercial Bank design team continued to grow and evolve, yet remain stretched thin across the space, I began conversations with our leadership team around a new engagement model overall. A great opportunity to bring to light the many models and thoughts that came up through the conversation of launching a design practice within Commercial Operations.
I created various boards to represent my thinking as well as bring together notes from the larger team. These were used to redesign our design organization.
