Akbank SME Sales and Service Model Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2025

In the ever-changing world, we continue to follow customer expectations and trends and be pioneers in the solutions we offer. Our SME customers face with many new expectations and challenges in a changing world. In particular, digitalization and economic fluctuations require SMEs to adapt. We saw that there was a need for renewal to meet the needs of the SMEs as a continuation of the 2018 transformation. The utilization rates of our SME RMs’ had reached over 130% and our bank has a continuing purpose of increasing our market share in the SME customers. And also in line with digitalization strategies we needed to meet the needs of increasing number of customers with our current number of RMs. We have identified products and services that take most effort from RMs and have strategic priority for our customers.We have reconsidered the service model end-to-end,including interaction points such as onboarding,commercial loan,commercial credit card,overdraft loan,fees and comissions management,POS,automatic invoice payment,digital channel definition and security transactions, which constitute 70% of the effort of our RMs. We have decreased the time of our product sales and onboarding process in a range of 45% and %73 with our new end to end solutions.With the impact of project despite, the increasing number of customers receiving service from the branch and the constant number of employees; we reduced our utilization rates and increased the time our RMs allocate to value-added activities Under the leadership of CESD (Customer Experience and Service Design), together with the SME Business Unit and the participation of 300+ Akbanklı expert team members from different business units, audit control units and Technology, we redesigned the SME experience with zero based design way for 2 years.

We launched a transformation program in 2018 to pioneer changing customer needs and future banking trends. With the acceleration of digitalization in the banking sector and changing customer expectations, we have renewed the experience we offer end-to-end in line with the New Generation Akbank vision. We strengthened the Akbank's technological infrastructure, improved customer experience and transitioned to a more agile organizational structure. In the ever-changing world, we continue to follow customer expectations and trends and be pioneers in the solutions we offer. Our SME customers face with many new expectations and challenges in a changing world. In particular, digitalization and economic fluctuations require SMEs to adapt. SMEs’ expectations on fundamental issues such as digitalization and technology, sustainability, legislation and consultancy in order to achieve competitive advantage and efficiency by reducing costs shape our business practices. We saw that there was a need for renewal to meet the needs of the SMEs as a continuation of the 2018 transformation.

For our increasing number of customers we need to increase cross sell and respond to their needs quickly and flexibly.And also we need to reduce the ever-increasing workload of RMs’,to enable them to offer fast and integrated solutions and to ensure that they spend more time on value-added activities. The utilization rates of our SME RMs’ had reached over 130% and our bank has a continuing purpose of increasing our market share in the SME customers. And also in line with digitalization strategies we needed to meet the needs of increasing number of customers with our current number of RMs. Because of this workload our RMs could only spend 8% of their time for customer visit. So we reshaped our sales and service model.We have determined our vision as being at the place and time when our customers need us and providing solutions that will deepen and retain customers with paperless,automated and simple flows with end-to-end digitally integrated solutions. We support digitalisation of our SME customers. We aimed to increase the digital channel usage capabilities of our existing customers and to make our new customers Akbanklı by digitalizing them in the onboarding process. We have identified products and services that take most effort from RMs and have strategic priority for our customers.We have reconsidered the service model end-to-end,including interaction points such as onboarding,commercial loan,commercial credit card,overdraft loan,fees and comissions management,POS,automatic invoice payment,digital channel definition and security transactions,which constitute 70% of the effort of our RMs. Our service model includes in-branch and out-of-branch. Under the leadership of our team (Customer Experience and Service Design), together with the SME Business Unit and the participation of 300+ Akbanklı expert team members from different business units, audit control units and Technology, we redesigned the SME experience with zero based design way for 2 years. We and SME banking involved in each subprojects, the other product owner departmens involved in the relevant subprojects, such as Payment System Division for Commercial credit cards and POS, Digital bankind division for digital channel and security subprojects. While carrying out these studies, we conducted approximately 300 Akbanklı and customer interviews and 20 workshops. We examined 3000 Akbanklı and customer feedback and good practice examples. For each subprojects, we created project teams including members from all relevant units and branches. We organized 1.5-2 hours meetings for the project teams 3 days in a week. We also made weekly alignment meetings with our vice presidents. We also make monthly alignment meetings with our senior vice presidents to show what we have done in our projects and take their feedback. And then we also made steering comitee meetings with our C-level managers to show the progress of our projects and take their feedbacks. As we have done these alignment meetings for each levels we could successfully run the project.