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Alumni Spotlight - The Customer's Advocate

Manchit Rajani (MIIPS '18) is designing the future – the future of the consumer banking experience, that is.

As Vice President of Service Design at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Manchit is on a mission to identify every customer journey impacted by Chase's transition to cloud banking.

"Major banks have been using the same legacy systems for 50-60 years and have realized that if they want to stay in the game and be relevant in the future, they need to be more customer focused," said Manchit. "They must change in order to offer the same services that new FinTech startups offer. A lot of those companies use cloud-based technology that enables them to offer superior products, and the customer experience is a lot better as a result."

Fortunately, a Venn diagram of Manchit's priorities would center the customer experience.

"The passion here is not banking and finance; the passion is making things better for people."

This passion steered Manchit from designing cars in India to enrolling in the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services degree program in Pittsburgh.

"As I got into car design, I realized I was essentially working on styling exercises. It was more about how the car looked and not much about the driver - or the passenger - and how they used or experienced the car," Manchit recalled. "I would always try to design cars to invoke a feeling in the people who were using or looking at the car. I realized then that I was more interested in UX design. MIIPS helped me shape where I wanted my career to go."

Manchit's IPD Capstone project and summer internship solidified his post-graduation plans.

"We had used the 'Double Diamond' design process for the capstone so I knew that it worked, and that I liked it. I used it again during my internship at Highmark Health, and that experience demonstrated to me that this process works in the real world. It also helped me identify what I wanted to do after I graduated, what companies to target, and the kind of jobs I wanted," Manchit said.

Manchit didn't need his target list though; Highmark hired him after graduation as a UX designer.

As he grew in the role, Manchit was tasked with analyzing larger end-to-end experiences.

"Instead of designing one screen or a 'micro-interaction' as I like to call it, for example, I assessed how multiple user experiences came together to provide a service: how patients got appointments, what happened at the doctor's office, what software was being used by physicians and staff, how patients interacted with insurance after a visit, etc. For a positive experience for patients, all these different experiences had to work seamlessly with each other to provide that overarching macro-experience. So, little by little I realized, even though it was all UX design, I was actually doing service design," Manchit said.

Manchit defines service design as “how we get people, technology, and processes to come together to deliver an experience to a customer."

He considered banking as a natural career progression – not just because of the opportunity it presented but more so because of the transition the industry is undergoing.

"At Highmark, I worked on healthcare transformation, and it was something very similar. I had to work within the confines of regulations while being innovative, so I had applicable experience," Manchit said. "One of the most interesting parts of my current role is that it has an official service design title, and that wasn't necessarily offered in the past."

As the first (and only) service designer for this project, Manchit began by identifying the stakeholders and creating the service design process.

"It's a challenge to even identify who needs to be involved when you start a project like this one, especially at an entity as large as Chase, which has more than 250,000 employees. Each team's roadmap and priorities are different. My job is to bring everyone and everything together, so we can align on how to deliver a unified experience to the customer," Manchit said.

Manchit's teams are focusing on three customer journeys to start: A customer opens an account; a customer deposits money; and a customer views those funds on the mobile app.

"These journeys create the framework for how a person banks with us. Once we know this process works, the plan, of course, is to scale. It's not just three journeys. We have 53 identified, and when I factor in all the different channels like our website, the app, our branches, it'll probably be 100-150 journeys or even more."

Each journey has a team that examines how a customer currently completes that journey, what the pain points are, and for which opportunities to solve. The aim is to understand the customer's needs, reimagine that experience, and create the future state for it.

"We're doing ideation, prototyping for new ideas, then iteration, and then finally pushing it into development. At that stage, we work with product, tech, data, and design partners; we're always in contact. It's a give-take, a compromise sometimes. I don't need to know everything about the backend, but I do need to understand what's happening, what limitations in our backend tech is stopping us from delivering the ideal experience or causing a pain point for our customers, so I can propose solutions to enhance the experience accordingly," Manchit said.

Regardless of the kind of experience, one constant is Manchit's dedication to improving that experience.

"It's become my way of life now. When I was younger, my parents told me, 'Do what you like but like what you do.' In order for me to like what I do, I need to be constantly engaged. Regardless of wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, I'm always thinking about what could be made better,” Manchit said.

"So when I look across the 53 journeys that I'm overseeing, there's still so much to learn. It's going to take a while for me to figure out everything. But what keeps me going is my innate need to improve the life of our customers and to make things better for people. It's not easy, but when it's all done and comes together, it will be worth it."