Press Release
Nextgen Sme Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience by Akbank Service Design Team Wins the Silver A' Design Award in Meta, Strategic and Service Design
Akbank Service Design Team acknowledged for meta, strategic and service design by the international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 22, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ Nextgen Sme Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience by Akbank Service Design Team, designed for Akbank T.a.Ş, has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Meta, Strategic and Service Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The result belongs to the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Silver A' Design Award Means
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
Regarding Nextgen Sme Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience
Akbank Service Design Team integrates customer digitization and diverse products on one platform with a Phygital approach for access outside branches. Unlike competitors, they offer personalized multi-product bundles in a single flow, enabling digital activation of up to 7 products. Their first point of mobile use innovation eliminates paper and physical presence through digital contract approvals. They employ a reward-based sales model to increase both customer relationship depth and sales efficiency.
About Akbank Service Design Team
The organization designs seamless, end-to-end service experiences by aligning customer, employee, and corporate expectations. Through digitalization and automation, it continuously optimizes processes to maximize efficiency. This innovation ensures every interaction is refined, delivering sustainable value and operational excellence across the entire institutional landscape.
Award Record
This recognition makes Akbank Service Design Team a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Meta, Strategic and Service Design Award
The A' Service Design Award is an international design competition recognizing excellence in service designs by consultancy companies and brands worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to service designers, strategic design consultants, business designers and UX/UI designers from all countries. Typical entries include design strategy, design management, service design, franchising design, strategic design and service blueprints. The awarded service designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/service
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/181933
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/181933
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!181933
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/380594
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Nextgen Sme Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience
- Function
- Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience
- Category
- Meta, Strategic and Service Design
- Discipline
- Service Design
- Industry
- Business and Design Industry
- Colors
- Red, White Smoke, Gainsboro, Dark Red and Gray
- Images
- 4
- Client
- Akbank T.a.Ş
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Akbank Service Design Team
- Country
- Turkiye
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #181933
Credits
- Team
- Service Design and Process Development Team, Staff Channel Design Team
- Image Credits
- Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- We integrate customer digitization and diverse products on one platform with a "phygital" approach for access outside branches. Unlike competitors, we offer personalized multi-product bundles in a single flow, enabling activation of up to 7 products digitally. Our "first point of mobile use" innovation eliminates paper and physical presence through digital contract approvals. We employ a reward-based sales model to increase both customer relationship depth and sales efficiency.
- Inspiration
- Our mission is to revolutionize SME banking by merging digital speed with human-centric service. SMEs face economic and bureaucratic challenges, so created a phygital ecosystem that integrates digitization and product diversity. By making banking a proactive partner, SMEs gain a competitive edge and lower costs through efficient, automated processes. Available on while our customers need us and providing solutions with paperless, automated flows with E2E digital integrated solutions.
- Research
- The research aimed to understand how SMEs and relationship managers experience onboarding and product sales in daily banking operations. The main goal was to reduce complexity while enabling faster and more confident decision-making. The study combined interviews, workshops, journey reviews, and feedback analysis with over 300 SME customers and relationship managers. The findings highlighted fragmented processes and high workload. These insights directly shaped a phygital service model that improved efficiency, clarity, and real business outcomes.
- Challenge
- The main challenge was simplifying complex and regulation-driven banking processes without losing trust or compliance. The service needed to balance automation with human support, while working consistently across branch, mobile, and out-of-branch contexts. Another challenge was ensuring adoption by both SMEs and relationship managers with different levels of digital maturity, while aligning multiple internal teams around a shared service vision.
- Realization and Technology
- The experience was shaped through research with approximately 300 SME customers and relationship managers, supported by more than 20 workshops and 3,000 feedback points. These insights showed that SMEs and RMs needed faster, clearer and more integrated onboarding and sales processes. The interface therefore uses guided flows, progressive disclosure and a clear visual hierarchy to support multi-product decisions within a single journey.
- Project Duration and Location
- The design of project started in February 2023 and finished in August 2023 in Turkey, and was realised in January 2025.
- Specifications
- Based on the insights we gained from the research, we prepared wireframes and prototypes, designed an end to end, simple, functional, sales-focused, and user-friendly interface that aligns with Akbank's design language. Also, we worked with the goal of an understandable and guiding language and established a tone of voice. The design turns complex multi-product banking processes into a streamlined, easy-to-use and coordinated experience.
- Keywords
- #E2EZeroBasedDesign #E2EServiceAndExperienceDesign #HolisticSMEBanking #NextGenBankingSolution
