ASN BANk | Service strategy
Designing a journey-led solution for customer identification
As a bank, ASN Bank has the responsibility to protect customers from risks such as fraud and money laundering. This requires keeping customer information accurate and up-to-date. In this project, I led the end-to-end service approach for customer identification, defining the journey, touchpoints and experience strategy.
GOAL
Activate customers to complete the identification process in order to comply with regulations.
OUTCOME
A clear customer journey and communication strategy rooted in behavioural science, designed to activate customers and increase compliance.
MY ROLE
Lead Service Design, Concept design, UX design, Communication, User research, Stakeholder management
COMPANY
ASN Bank
The project
To help customers of ASN Bank comply with new legal requirements (Wwft), I led the design of a reusable service that enables digital ID updates and pro-actively guides customers through the process.
As lead Service Designer, I was responsible for the end-to-end journey – from behavioural research and stakeholder alignment to journey mapping, concept design and content strategy. I facilitated strategic alignment with business, compliance, process management and product stakeholders, aligning business requirements and policies with the service experience.
By integrating behavioural science with clear communication and seamless UX, we ativated over 40% of customers in the first phase alone and established a service model now used as a blueprint for future compliance initiatives.
Note: some images in this case are blurred for confidentiality reasons.
Research & insights
To better understand the problem space, I collaborated closely with a behavioural expert. Together, we explored behavioural theories relevant to our challenge — including models like ADKAR — and drew inspiration from behavioural experiments related to resistance and motivation. I translated these insights into a behavioural mapping to identify friction points and opportunities, while also starting to brainstorm early solution directions.
Using this foundation, I created a task analysis and an early customer journey, focusing on likely customer questions, experiences, concerns, and moments of resistance. These early artefacts became key input for the communication approach and overall journey design.
From our research, I also defined three guiding service principles. These helped steer design decisions and created a shared understanding with stakeholders throughout the project.
Stakeholder alignment
At the start of the project, I quickly recognized that focusing solely on the digital flow wouldn’t be enough to achieve our goal. Our behavioural insights clearly showed lots of behavioural factors play a role that couldn’t be solved by UX alone — a broader, journey-led approach was needed.
Using findings from the discovery phase, I advocated for a shift in scope. I helped the team and stakeholders visualize the full customer journey, highlighting where different teams, channels, and touchpoints would need to work together to guide customers toward compliance.
To create alignment, I facilitated multiple co-creation sessions with stakeholders from across the Volksbank brands. Together, we mapped key touchpoints, explored customer needs and behaviours, and defined how communication could support both user and business goals. This process helped create a sense of ownership and buy-in from all parties involved.
Throughout the project, I maintained regular check-ins with stakeholders to keep the journey aligned across teams and ensure decisions remained grounded in our shared vision.
Concept design
Together with the behavioural expert, I developed three initial concepts for the digital flow and communication strategy. Each was rooted in different behavioural approaches: 1) Ease of use & self-efficacy, 2) Context & addressing scepticism, 3) A hybrid of both approaches. We shared these concepts with stakeholders across the different banks and iterated together in co-creation sessions, refining content and approach.
To validate our assumptions, we conducted a concept test with customers, focusing on initial customer reactions to different behavioural techniques and communication styles. This helped us fine-tune the tone, sequence, and emphasis of the final customer approach.
Journey mapping
Using insights from user testing, research, and co-creation, I designed the full end-to-end customer journey, aligning customer-facing flows with internal business processes. I collaborated with a designer from a parallel team to integrate the identification flow, ensuring a consistent and seamless experience across all touchpoints. This service journey map became the blueprint for the project — driving decisions, aligning teams, and guiding implementation across brands.
I also created service blueprints to align internal operations with the desired customer experience, reducing friction and clarifying responsibilities across teams.
Beyond the digital flow, I also designed the in-store experience for customer service employees assisting users with the ID process. This included employee communications and practical support materials like work instructions to help them answer questions confidently.
A key part of the service was a multi-touchpoint communication plan designed to create urgency and reduce resistance. The plan included a series of reminders across channels, carefully timed and worded to balance activation with trust.
To ensure alignment with bank policies around potential consequences for non-compliance, I worked closely with the process manager and product owner. Together, we detailed the communication strategy, ensuring it met behavioural, UX, and business requirements — forming the foundation for both the journey and the operational end-to-end process.
UX & Content Design
With the customer journey defined, I designed the in-app experience for the identification process. This included a series of contextual messages that increased in urgency over time — from subtle nudges to a login take-over and, ultimately, a blocking message for customers who didn’t act. These UX elements were fully aligned with the communication plan and overall identification flow.
Alongside this, I was responsible for the end-to-end content strategy across the full customer journey. I collaborated with a behavioural expert and a content editor to ensure messaging was consistent, persuasive, and in line with both UX and compliance goals. I created initial content mappings to define the tone, intent, and structure for each touchpoint. These formed the basis for the final content.
I also co-wrote the final content across all channels — including in-app messages, emails, letters, and the website — ensuring a unified voice and message throughout the experience.
Implementation
Given the complexity of the service and the number of processes involved, implementation required intensive cross-functional collaboration. A big part of my role was to align teams and translate the customer journey into operational reality.
I worked closely with the communications team, platform teams, and representatives from each bank brand, as well as legal and privacy departments to ensure all touchpoints and flows were aligned, compliant, and feasible. These early conversations helped us proactively address concerns around sensitive customer data and communication risks.
Through this collaborative effort, our team was able to design and implement an new way of working — one that streamlined the process and ensured a better customer experience from end to end.
Data & Insights
Throughout the project, I was also responsible for monitoring and improving the customer journey. We began with a series of pilot runs to validate the early steps of the process and fine-tune the communication approach.
To continuously improve the experience, I also gathered and analysed data from multiple sources — including CES surveys, customer service feedback, and user analytics. These insights directly informed ongoing updates to both the user flow and content during our releases.
We also conducted customer interviews to test different reminder strategies — each based on distinct behavioural techniques. This allowed us to optimise our communication plan, learning which approaches were most effective in activating customers while maintaining trust.
The result
By leading the customer journey and aligning teams around a shared vision, I designed a consistent, end-to-end customer experience across all touchpoints — from the digital flow to customer communications, website content, and in-branch support.
Each touchpoint was grounded in behavioural insights and design principles, ensuring the experience was not only usable, but also persuasive and trustworthy. By mapping the journey to internal policies and business processes, we created a service that increased customer self-efficacy, reduced resistance and effectively activated behaviour — thus increasing overall compliancy with in the bank. The final customer journey and end-to-end process now serve as the blueprint for future compliance initiatives across the bank.
Even in the initial phase — before any formal consequences were introduced — we saw strong results: over 40% of customers across all age groups completed the identification task.
My activities
- Service design
- Customer journey mapping
- Communication strategy
- Content creation
- User experience design
- Workshop facilitation
- Multi-disciplinary team collaboration