Silver Meta, Strategic and Service Design · 2026
Nextgen Sme Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience
- A' Design Award 2026 Silver Winner in Meta, Strategic and Service Design
- Awarded April 15, 2026
- CLIENT: Akbank T.a.Ş
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 27,050
- Verification code 1F8DAD7DAB · Verify this award
About 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.
Nextgen Sme Phygital Customer Onboarding Experience by Akbank Service Design Team represents a sophisticated contribution to contemporary service design practice, demonstrating how thoughtful interface architecture can transform complex business processes into navigable customer journeys. The presentation format—featuring overlapping tablet devices against an uncluttered white field—reflects current conventions in user experience portfolio documentation, allowing viewers to appreciate both individual screen states and their sequential relationship within a broader workflow narrative. The design team appears to engage with established principles of progressive disclosure, where the horizontal stepper mechanism reveals journey milestones while maintaining forward momentum through completed stage indicators rendered in the signature crimson that anchors the visual identity system. This chromatic choice proves particularly effective, as the warm red communicates both brand presence and actionable interface elements without overwhelming the informational density required for enterprise-grade product configuration. The card-based selection modules demonstrate mastery of contemporary component design, employing consistent spacing, clear typographic hierarchy, and familiar checkbox conventions that reduce cognitive load during complex multi-product selection scenarios. The inclusion of a celebratory banner featuring illustrated figures introduces an element of human warmth into what might otherwise present as purely transactional territory, suggesting the design team's awareness that business onboarding experiences benefit from moments of acknowledgment and encouragement. One observes careful attention to accessibility considerations in the contrast ratios between crimson indicators and white backgrounds, ensuring readability across diverse viewing conditions. The viewer might contemplate how such systematic yet humane approaches to interface design contribute to broader conversations about the relationship between technological efficiency and human-centered service delivery.
Press Kit
- 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.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 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.
- Tags
- #E2EZeroBasedDesign #E2EServiceAndExperienceDesign #HolisticSMEBanking #NextGenBankingSolution
- Production 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.
- Design 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.
- Project Duration
- The design of project started in February 2023 and finished in August 2023 in Turkey, and was realised in January 2025.
- 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.
- 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.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #2: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #3: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026.
Image #4: Illustrator, Akbank Design Studio, 2026. - Patents
- Copyrights belong to Akbank T.A.Ş, 2026.