The Problem / Context
One of France's largest banks, serving 27 million customers, was planning a significant overhaul of its customer tier structure, partly driven by a merger with another bank that had its own separate tier system, and partly by a strategic shift toward digital self-service for lower tier customers. The research was commissioned to understand the current reality of how different customer segments interacted with the bank across all touch points, to anticipate how the planned changes would land, and to identify what would be needed to make the transition work. At stake was a fundamental change to the implicit contract customers felt they had with the bank: access to human advisers, in-branch services, and telephone support that many had relied on for years.
My Role
I was lead researcher on this project, embedded as a consultant within the bank's digital team. I partnered with a project manager from the omnichannel team, who had strong knowledge of internal systems and programmes but limited research methodology experience. My role was to bring research rigour and expertise while also acting as a bridge between two teams that had very different ways of working, different professional cultures, and no established working relationship. Navigating that internal tension, being embedded within one team while needing genuine collaboration from another, was as much a part of the work as the research itself.
I designed and led the full research programme: scoping the study, conducting fieldwork, running analysis, facilitating co-design workshops and design sprints, and communicating findings to manager and director level stakeholders across both teams. I was the sole person with UX research expertise on the project.
Methodology
The research combined fieldwork across bank branches and call centres with remote interviews to ensure coverage beyond Paris and across socioeconomic contexts. In branches, I conducted interviews with financial advisers specialising in different customer tiers, observed how they managed their client databases and CRM tools, and explored how they were navigating an increasingly digital service model. In call centres, I listened in on live customer calls to understand the real volume and nature of customer contact. Remote interviews extended the reach of the study to advisers and customers in regions with very different relationships to banking and digital access.
Co-design workshops and design sprints brought together stakeholders from the digital and omnichannel teams to work through findings and define future service concepts. I designed and facilitated all of these sessions, creating an environment where participants with very different levels of familiarity with design methods could contribute meaningfully.
Key Findings
The research surfaced a gap between the bank's tier model and the lived reality of both advisers and customers. Customer tiers did not always reflect people's actual financial situations or needs, and advisers were frequently using their own judgment to manage and support customers in ways that diverged from what the system prescribed. This informal layer of human oversight was quietly compensating for gaps in the model.
The planned shift to digital self-service for lower tier customers revealed a significant inclusion challenge. In branches serving areas with lower socioeconomic status, the research found a much higher than anticipated proportion of customers who would struggle with a fully digital model: elderly customers, those with low literacy, and those with limited French language proficiency. For some of these customers, the assumption of smartphone access and digital independence simply did not hold. The research put a much larger spotlight on this than had originally been scoped, with implications not just for the rollout strategy but for the bank's legal obligations to provide accessible services.
The research also found that advisers had mixed reactions to the planned changes. Some welcomed the prospect of a more manageable, focused client base. Others raised concerns about customers whose situations did not fit neatly into any tier, and whose needs would fall through the gaps of a more automated system.
What I Delivered
Research reports synthesising findings from fieldwork and interviews, workshop outputs, user flows, customer journeys, and UX and content design inputs. All deliverables were designed to feed directly into the bank's planning for the new tier structure and service model rollout.
Outcomes / Impact
The research findings were incorporated into the bank's rollout plan for the new customer tier structure. Key outcomes included a recommendation for a phased transition rather than an immediate cutover, and the identification of a need for advisers to retain some discretion in how customers were categorised and supported based on their individual circumstances.
Perhaps most significantly, the research elevated the visibility of vulnerable customer populations within the planning process, making the case that the scale of customers who could not be served by a purely digital model was larger than originally assumed, and that providing accessible alternatives was not only a customer experience issue but a legal requirement. The decisions and service structures shaped by this research ultimately affected all 27 million of the bank's customers.