Service Design
\
Wealth Management
Designing
for loyalty
A service design engagement mapping the end-to-end PMS investor experience — uncovering where the system broke down and what a reimagined service could feel like.
Role
Service Designer & Researcher
Client
Indian AMC
Agency
Nihilent Consulting
Timeline
~5 months · Jun 2019
01
The Brief
01
Why do people leave — and how do we design a service that earns their loyalty?
Motilal Oswal's Portfolio Management Services division was experiencing higher-than-expected investor exits. The question wasn't about improving the product — it was about understanding the human reasons behind departure.
We applied a design thinking methodology across the full client ecosystem — studying not just investors, but advisors, relationship managers, and the organisational structures shaping their behaviour.
Methodology
01
Sense
02
Immerse
03
Define
04
Ideate
05
Prototype
Phases 01–04 are covered in this case study.
02
RESEARCH AT SCALE
02
Purposive sampling across investment value, investor age, geography, and active/inactive status — speaking to the full breadth of the system.
54+
Interviews across investors & advisors
8+
Cities across India
7+
Service stages mapped in depth
Sampling breakdown
40 PMS investors across investment brackets and age groups, plus 14 advisors spanning three distinct types — IFAs, Bank RMs, and Motilal Oswal's own advisory team.
₹25L bracket — highest exits
82%
Age 45+ — share of all exits
73%
Post-2014 onboarding
78%
Interview funnel
Empathy interviews funnelled from lifestyle context before probing investment behaviour — establishing trust before the PMS-specific questions.
1
Lifestyle & life stage context
2
Relationship with money & success
3
Investment journey & product exposure
4
PMS-specific experience & perception
03
SERVICE ECOSYSTEM
03
Before mapping touchpoints, we mapped actors. Four distinct groups with different motivations, incentives, and relationships to MO — understanding the tensions between them was foundational.
Actor ecosystem map
PMS Service · 2019
PMS Investor
HNI seeking wealth creation. Heavily dependent on advisors for information and trust.
advisor mediates
Financial Advisor
IFAs, Bank RMs, MO's own team. Gatekeeper between investor and MO.
MO
AMC
Product
Manufacturer
Digital Platforms
Web portal, mobile app, PMS aggregators. Low adoption, high opportunity.
market context
Capital Markets
Equity performance shapes investor emotion and exit decisions more than any touchpoint.
Core service failure — MO operated as a B2B manufacturer with almost no direct relationship with the end investor. When advisors acted in their own interest, investors had no other touchpoint to fall back on.
Investor archetypes
5 identified
AB
"In advisor I trust"
Advisor Bhakt
Defers entirely to advisor. Needs handholding and personal visits. High loyalty if advisor is loyal.
CM
"Please stand by me"
Comfort Me
Needs reassurance. Conviction breaks without proactive communication in downturns.
PS
"Show me the money"
Performance Seeker
Data-driven and savvy. Needs cause-effect analysis. Disengages when commentary is generic.
MC
"Am in-charge"
Mister Commander
Trusts MO but expects to be heard. Craves exclusive access and personalised engagement.
CF
"Fear of missing out"
Complete Misfit
FOMO-driven entry. No equity temperament. High exit risk. Needs screening at onboarding.
Advisor archetypes
3 identified
IA
"Wealth for life"
Independent Advisor
Lifetime-value approach. Financial plan as relationship anchor. Highest retention ally for MO.
RM
"Sweat idle money"
Bank RM
Monthly-target driven. No trail commission = no retention incentive. Highest churn risk.
MA
"Buy right, sit tight"
MO Advisor
Genuinely invested in the philosophy. Tele-calling only. Needs field support to be effective.
04
SERVICE BLUE PRINT
04
7 lifecycle stages — tracking what each actor did, saw, and felt. The blueprint revealed where backstage failures surfaced as frontstage pain.
investor
advisor
MO AMC
pain
Opportunity
Stage
Discover
Sale
Onboard
Service
Maintain
X-Sell
Retain
Investor
Hears about PMS from advisor or peer
Reviews collateral, signs forms
Provides KYC, signs ~20 pages
Contacts advisor with query
Receives monthly report via email
Considers top-up or new product
Evaluates continued investment
Advisor
Introduces PMS with collateral
Recommends single product, closes
Completes physical form, submits
Acts as gatekeeper for queries
Provides report on request only
Cross-sells based on own targets
IFA retains; Bank RM often churns
MO Frontstage
Brand awareness via track record
Fund collateral & performance data
No welcome call
Call centre — scripted, low quality
Monthly communique newsletter
New fund launches → advisor
No proactive retention outreach
Line of Visibility
Pain Points
PMS invisible; no B2C pull
Single option; FOMO-driven sales
5–7 day TAT, no updates, no welcome
Apathy from call centre; gatekeeping
Newsletters unread; no portfolio context
No follow-up on partial redemptions
Bank RMs churn on first complaint
Opportunities
Investor testimonials & ambassador program
Financial planning tool — right product match
AM/PM SLA + named MO RM welcome call
Chatbot + trained specialists + hotline
Video podcast by fund manager
Recommendation engine + alerts
Proactive RM call on redemption signal
Pachaas lakh diya hai, ek phone call nahi aaya.
Active PMS Investor, Mumbai· C4C9D3
"
05
CRITICAL TOUCHPOINTS
05
The touchpoints with the highest emotional impact — where positives built conviction and negatives triggered exits. Most failed the same way: impersonal, generic, advisor-mediated.
01
Welcome experience
Onboarding
Physical + Call
Investors expected a warm welcome from MO after investing ₹25L+. What they got was silence, paperwork delays, and confusion about who to contact.
Pain
No welcome call or letter
Fix
Nominated RM + same-day welcome call
02
Monthly report
MAINTAIN
Email PDF
Reports were detailed and appreciated for transparency — but raised questions that had no answer. Selling equities to charge fees went unexplained and felt punitive.
Pain
Transparency without context
Fix
Contextual commentary + drill-down links
03
Investor con-call
MAINTAIN
Telephone conference
Poor audio, no ability to ask direct questions, fund managers calling in while driving. Most investors attended once and never returned.
Pain
Technically poor, no Q&A
Fix
Video stream + async Q&A + archive
04
Call centre
Service
Inbound phone
Investors found call centre responses scripted and unsatisfying. No one could explain investment decisions — and investors felt insignificant for calling.
Pain
Scripted, no ownership
Fix
Trained specialists + callback escalation
05
Monthly communication
MAINTAIN
Email newsletter
"No one reads lengthy newsletters — twitter ka zamaana hai." Investors ignored the communique. It spoke to the market, not to them or their fund.
Pain
Generic, not portfolio-specific
Fix
Fund manager video podcast per strategy
06
Redemption moment
RETAIN
Advisor-mediated
When investors signalled intent to exit, MO had no system to intercept. The advisor — often with a competing incentive — handled the conversation alone.
Pain
No MO intercept on redemption
Fix
Proactive RM call triggered on exit signal
07
Digital presence
Discover
Web, app, reviews
Online reviews were unmanaged and negative. The mobile app had near-zero adoption. MO's digital presence created doubt rather than confidence.
Pain
Unmanaged reviews, low app utility
Fix
Proactive RM call triggered on exit signal
08
Relationship events
RELATIONSHIP
In-person
Investors and advisors repeatedly mentioned wanting face-to-face engagement — seminars, informal dinners, investment events. These barely existed at the time.
Pain
Almost no in-person MO engagement
Fix
City-level investor events + golf / exclusive meets
06
SERVICE INTERVENTIONS
06
100+ improvement opportunities synthesised into three strategic horizons — from fixing the operational baseline to reimagining the service model entirely.
Horizon 01
01
Fix
Crash onboarding TAT. AM/PM fulfilment SLA. Digitise the baseline. Make the service dependable before adding anything new.
Horizon 02
02
Shift
Fund manager as anchor of all communication. Monthly communique becomes a video podcast. Reports link to context, not just data.
Horizon 03
03
Reinvent
Privileged investor tiers. Exclusive events. Recommendation engine. Make investors feel chosen, not just served.
01
Assign a nominated MO RM to every investor
A named relationship manager who calls quarterly, confirms onboarding, and is reachable via a direct hotline. The single biggest gap in the current service.
Fix
Operational
02
AM/PM fulfilment SLA for all advisor requests
If a request arrives in the AM, it is fulfilled by PM. And vice versa. A discipline that signals responsiveness and builds advisor trust immediately.
Fix
Operational
03
Rebuild the Monthly Communique as a video podcast
CEO gives the market overview. Each fund manager records a 5-minute portfolio-specific update. Replace the unread newsletter with something investors watch.
Shift
Relational
04
Intercept every redemption signal with a proactive call
Any partial or full redemption triggers an immediate, personal call from the MO-nominated RM — not to prevent the exit, but to understand it and offer alternatives.
Shift
Relational
05
Create a Privileged Tier for ₹1Cr+ investors
Early product access, exclusive city events, periodic CEO meets. Deliver the 'chosen' feeling that the PMS product implicitly promises but the service rarely delivers.
Reinvent
Experiential
06
Build an Advisor Support App with at-risk client flagging
Give advisors a 360° view of their client portfolio, behavioural signals, and one-tap access to schedule a MO RM visit. Make retention easy for advisors who want to do it.
Reinvent
Experiential
07
KEY FINDINGS
07
Six patterns surfaced consistently across 54 interviews — each pointing to a systemic gap in how the service was designed, not just delivered.
01
Discovery is fully advisor-gated. Investors rarely find PMS independently. Because advisors control sales and servicing, MO has almost no direct relationship with the investor it is ultimately accountable to.
02
Onboarding creates no belonging. No welcome call, no named contact at MO, no status updates during a 5–7 day processing wait. Investors arrived curious and left feeling forgotten before their money had been deployed.
03
Communication is broadcast, not personalised. Every channel — newsletter, conference call, SMS — spoke to the market or the product, never to the investor's specific portfolio or situation.
04
Transparency without context creates anxiety. Detailed statements were appreciated in principle — but triggered more questions than they answered. Selling equities to charge fees, unexplained, damaged trust significantly.
05
Bank RMs are structurally aligned to churn. Monthly sales targets, no trail commissions, and high turnover means Bank RMs have no incentive to retain an irate investor — every incentive points to replacement.
06
The service model treats advisors as the customer. By designing exclusively for the B2B channel, MO created a service only as good as the intermediary. When intermediaries acted in self-interest, investors had no alternative.
MO is what I trusted, fees is what I knew, and performance is what I hoped.
PMS Investor, Bengaluru
"
Interview breakdown
PMS Investors
40
Financial Advisors
14
Cities
8
08
REFLECTIONS
08
Research at scale
54 interviews across 8 cities required coordinating a distributed field team while maintaining the quality of empathy interviews. Managing scale without losing depth was the central methodological challenge.
Systems thinking
The most important insight wasn't about a touchpoint — it was structural. The B2B2C model had a dependency problem. No amount of touchpoint improvement would fix a system where the intermediary had misaligned incentives.
Competing interests
Designing for a system with three stakeholder groups — each with different incentives — meant every intervention had to be examined for how it would shift advisor behaviour, not just investor experience.
What I'd do differently
The service blueprint and ecosystem map were built primarily from research synthesis — I'd now run a dedicated validation workshop with actual investors and advisors to pressure-test the blueprint before moving into ideation. Co-authoring the map with stakeholders builds buy-in and surfaces gaps that a single team misses.
I'd also push for measurable success indicators to be defined alongside each intervention — so the work doesn't end at a strategy deck, but connects to outcomes the business can track. Interventions without metrics are just recommendations.