CASE STUDY 04
Customer strategy and segmentation
Building a £100m business banking proposition around what small businesses really need
INSIGHT · PROPOSITION · EXPERIENCE DESIGN
AT A GLANCE
ROLE
Head of Service Design
COMPANY
Nationwide for Business
SCOPE
New mobile-first business banking proposition
OUTCOME
Customer strategy and segmentation for a £100m launch
The challenge
Nationwide was launching a brand-new, mobile-first business banking proposition worth £100m. Small business customers have very different needs from personal banking customers, and the proposition had to win them from established competitors. The core customer frustration I uncovered was the need for accounting support and to better manage time-critical actions like paying HMRC and staff on time.
My role
As Head of Service Design, I partnered with the senior leadership and programme team to define the go-to-market customer strategy and customer segmentation.
The approach
I ran research and strategy sprints with leadership to understand the core customers, what they needed, which channels they preferred and where existing banking journeys let them down.
Four customer segments, each with distinct needs, behaviours and pain points
From that, we built a customer strategy around what business owners actually need, with acquisition and revenue growth designed in from the start. The insight also helped leadership decide what mattered most at launch and what could wait.
Turning research into the end-to-end journey, with paper prototypes for each step.
Working across multiple teams, I helped set shared conventions for journey mapping and service blueprinting, so every team designed from the same view of the customer.
A service blueprint for the account opening journey, using the shared conventions every team designed from.
The outcome
£100m
new business banking proposition
4
customer segments defined to shape the strategy
1
shared approach to journey mapping and service blueprinting
Nationwide gained a clear customer strategy for the proposition, a shared way of designing journeys and service blueprints, and metrics to guide priorities as it grew.
WHAT I’D DO AGAIN
Run research sprints with leadership in the room. Decisions came faster when executives heard customers directly.
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