More than a decade ago, DBS was known by an unfortunate nickname: “Damn Bloody Slow”.
A culture of corporate hierarchy had left DBS’ customer-facing employees with little power to make decisions and no way of giving feedback to management, leading to poor customer service.
DBS knew that in order to win the hearts of their customers, they had to build a culture that put user experience at the centre of decision-making. This meant adopting an employee-centric mindset first to allow their staff to understand the importance of user centricity.
That same year, DBS underwent a transformation to change customers’ banking experience by making internal improvements: they dismantled the rigid hierarchy, redesigned their offices to be more open and collaborative, and created feedback channels for staff. They also started simple and easy to remember behavioural guides to help their employees prioritise the user first.
Design Thinking and Why It Is Important
The user centricity practised by DBS is core to design thinking – a human-centred approach to innovation that involves thinking like a designer to solve real-world problems creatively.
Solutions are built in response to empathising with users by understanding their needs and the problems they may encounter. Because of this, experimentation and quick iterations are necessary to refine the solutions.
This also enables organisations to be more responsive to changes, pivot quickly during crises and respond to operational problems with greater speed and efficiency.