CASE STUDY
Unlocking a stalled onboarding strategy
Built gradually across a number of teams and initiatives, onboarding had become difficult to see as one connected experience. I helped stakeholders step back, align around the full journey and move forward with shared understanding and purpose.
The onboarding process hadn’t been intentionally designed end-to-end. Instead, it had grown gradually over time. Different teams had contributed with the best of intentions and there was an active effort to improve it. But momentum was starting to dip, and it was becoming harder to see how all the moving parts connected.
A few key challenges were surfacing:
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No shared view of the whole journey. Without a clear experience framework to guide decisions, work was happening in pockets. This made it difficult to prioritise, coordinate efforts, or feel confident about what should happen next
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Gaps in the customer experience. When we stepped back and looked at onboarding as one connected journey, it became clear that some moments were underdeveloped — or missing entirely
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Alignment across teams. The success of onboarding relied on collaboration across the business, but there wasn’t yet a shared understanding of what a great experience looked like
Current efforts were centred on incremental improvement through isolated initiatives, but to stand the best chance of success we needed to pause, zoom out and realign around a clearer, shared vision of the experience we were shaping.
Skills
Strategic design leadership | People leadership | Service Design | Communication
Introducing a new toolkit
To solve this challenge, I knew I needed to support the organisation in pivoting to a new way of thinking - we badly needed a shift in perspective. Although talented, committed people were working hard, the project lacked a shared lens through which to make decisions. Quite quickly, my role became less about “fixing onboarding” and more about helping the organisation zoom out and see it as a service that connected our experience to our customers'.
Joining a project already in motion brought its own challenges. I had to build relationships with stakeholders I hadn’t worked closely with before, get up to speed quickly on what had already been explored and understand the sensitivities around existing decisions. At the same time, I needed to gently reframe the problem in a way that created clarity, ownership and renewed energy.
We began with a series of focused workshops, designed around three core objectives:
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Create a shared understanding of the current state. We gathered everything we knew about the existing process including what was working, where friction existed and where uncertainty remained
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Visualise the desired future. Together, we mapped a target end-to-end journey using a service blueprint. This helped us identify moments of truth, pain points and opportunities across both front-stage and back-stage interactions
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Build alignment through collaboration. By bringing stakeholders from across teams into the same space, we created a shared understanding and began shaping a collective vision for what onboarding could become
These workshops created momentum, clarity and a foundation for more confident decision-making moving forward.
In-person as well as hybrid in-person/remote workshops were run with groups of stakeholders representing different teams
At first, there was some understandable hesitation, with people asking: Do we really need to go back to the beginning? Don’t we already know what we’re solving?
Taking a step back can feel counterintuitive when progress is already underway. But by creating space for open collaboration — and intentionally bringing different perspectives into the room — something began to shift.
As people saw how their work connected to others’, the energy changed. Conversations became more constructive. Assumptions surfaced. Gaps were acknowledged without defensiveness. What began as cautious participation evolved into genuine engagement, with stakeholders actively advocating for this more joined-up way of working.
Together, we started to see the bigger picture. We rebuilt onboarding as one connected, customer-centred journey — examining how existing components could fit together more coherently, and identifying where important needs (both customer and operational) weren’t yet being met.
From there, we defined clearer personas, articulated meaningful use cases, and mapped focused, task-based journeys that gave structure to our next steps.
The key deliverable that unlocked our path forwards: a service blueprint
Key deliverables
Service Blueprint
To bring clarity to both the customer and operational experience, I led the creation of a comprehensive service blueprint. This allowed us to map front-stage and back-stage interactions side by side, connecting what customers would experience with the processes, systems and teams supporting them.
Built collaboratively over several weeks, the blueprint surfaced siloed knowledge, exposed assumptions and provided, for the first time, a shared reference point for decision-making. Crucially, it was something the entire group had contributed to.
Ecosystem Map
To deepen our understanding of the wider context, I also developed an ecosystem map that highlighted the systems, stakeholders, and dependencies influencing onboarding. This helped make previously invisible relationships visible, strengthening cross-team awareness and accountability.
An ecosystem map built to help all stakeholders understand how the entire onboarding ecosystem came together
Structured Journey Framework
Looking at onboarding through a service design lens enabled two critical shifts:
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Visibility of gaps. We identified key moments in the journey that hadn’t been designed at all — both from a customer and operational perspective.
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Purpose-driven delivery. Every asset, form, and communication could now be tied back to a clear moment in the journey. This gave context to collateral and prevented further piecemeal development.
From the blueprint, I created a simple but effective action-tracking output that linked outstanding tasks directly to specific points in the journey. This gave teams clarity on what needed to be built, why it mattered and how it contributed to the whole service.
With a shared framework in place, the project regained structure and direction — and we were able to move forward with greater confidence and cohesion.
A simplified customer journey map showing key customer actions, opportunities, requirements and unknowns. This was used to facilitate discussion around actions and to allow those outside the group of key stakeholders to easily access and understand the outcomes of the blueprint exercise.
Impact
The collaborative service design approach delivered tangible outcomes across the onboarding journey:
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Identified and delivered a critical product feature. Through mapping the end-to-end journey, we uncovered a key gap in the onboarding process. I helped define the need, articulate the requirements and successfully present it to the Executive team, gaining approval to build a feature that now facilitates onboarding more effectively
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Clarified and aligned collateral. We identified all the supporting assets needed to complete the journey. By creating a shared framework, teams could see what already existed, what needed developing and the purpose each piece served. This enabled a more user-focused, consistent approach to content
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Established a shared, user-centred way of working. Perhaps most importantly, the process shifted how teams approached onboarding. Stakeholders now had a clear line of sight across the entire journey, a shared reference point for decision-making, and a more collaborative mindset. This alignment ensured that any future work could be coordinated, intentional and focused on customer experience and outcomes
By stepping back and taking the time to connect the dots and enable more effective collaboration, we turned a fragmented onboarding process into a user-focused, documented journey that teams could align on.