Designing Cultural Transformation, Not Just A CRM
Service Design | Doblin | Deloitte-Digital | RBC
The brief was straightforward: consolidate 15+ fragmented systems into a single CRM for 35,000 RBC advisors, with a $50M Salesforce contract on the line. But the real problem surfaced fast in research. Advisors had spent careers mastering the complexity of those systems, knowing which tool to use, and when, was part of how they understood themselves as professionals. A cleaner CRM didn't just threaten their workflow. It threatened their identity.
$50M
Salesforce contract won
35,000
Advisors Impacted
100+
Behavioral interviews
Beat
Accenture and IBM
The Challenge
Four siloed teams, technology, brand strategy, business, and change management, were each optimizing for their own definition of success, with no shared experience model to align them. The $50M contract was already on the table. What wasn't clear was whether the platform would actually get adopted once it shipped.
The design challenge wasn't interface design. It was behavior change at scale, across an organization where expertise was the product and advisors had built professional identities around navigating complexity. A CRM that made their work easier on paper could still fail if it made them feel less capable.
What I Led
I reframed the project early: this wasn't a CRM rollout, it was an experience design problem. If advisors felt more capable using the new system, not just more efficient, adoption would follow. That insight shaped every decision downstream.
I ran 100+ behavioral interviews to build advisor archetypes that mapped not just tasks and pain points, but professional identity and relationship to complexity. When advisors saw their own stories reflected back in the research, resistance dropped. The archetypes became shared language across all four teams.
I designed journey maps as the source of truth for the entire engagement, not as a deliverable, but as a shared experience model. Every business requirement traced back to a moment in an advisor's day. Every stakeholder disagreement got resolved by returning to the map. One artifact gave six teams a single experience they were all accountable to.
Driving Insights
Banker next door archetype - synthesized from interviews
Advisor Journey mapped to tech, KPIs, change Management, and Client Impact
Production ready Wireframes - Insights reflected in Design
Outcomes
RBC awarded the $50M Salesforce contract, the largest retail banking CRM globally, beating Accenture and IBM on the proposal. Based on the quality of the research, RBC expanded the scope mid-engagement from strategy to full design execution. Journey maps became a required artifact for every subsequent transformation initiative at RBC. The engagement closed with RBC requesting 4 additional journeys, extending the work beyond the original brief.
What I Learned
The best experience design on this project wasn't the interface, it was the research synthesis. When advisors saw their own stories reflected in the archetypes, resistance dropped. People change behavior when they feel seen, not when they're given better tools. Positioning design as change management, not an isolated workstream, was what made the work land. That's the insight I carried forward.