Experience Designer | Superannuation Merger — Customer Experience Transformation

Merging two customer experiences at scale is one of the most complex challenges in service design. When two of Australia's largest superannuation funds came together, I was embedded within a dedicated CX design squad to ensure millions of members experienced a seamless transition from Day 1 of the merger and beyond.

This was a high-stakes transformation involving two heavily regulated, large-scale organisations where the margin for customer experience failure was minimal and the consequences of getting it wrong were significant. My role was to bring the customer voice into every stage of planning and decision-making, designing beyond traditional marketing and channel silos, and ensuring every direction taken was anchored to real member insight.

Working within a fast-paced agile environment, I collaborated with researchers, strategists, and product owners across weekly sprints, daily stand-ups, stakeholder workshops, and prioritisation sessions to surface opportunities and shape the unified experience. A key contribution was co-creating a set of Customer Experience Principles grounded in the needs of all customer groups and paired with operational and customer data to enable ongoing baselining and performance tracking. These became a powerful alignment tool across both strategy and measurement.

To anticipate friction and design with empathy, we activated qualitative research to understand what members most needed on Day 1. Findings were translated into clear, actionable CX artefacts, journey maps, experience frameworks, and communications guides that gave business leaders concrete tools to anchor decisions and build organisational confidence throughout a period of significant uncertainty.

Following the merger launch, I led a comprehensive customer experience health check surfacing where the experience had fallen short and presenting findings directly to senior leaders with clear, honest recommendations for rapid intervention. This feedback loop enabled the organisation to respond quickly and address member pain points from the outset.

This project demonstrated what becomes possible when customer-centred design is genuinely embedded in large-scale business transformation not as a support function, but as a strategic driver of decisions, ways of working, and outcomes.

Two funds, one Day 1 design