Avion Rewards (RBC)
How a fragmented loyalty ecosystem was transformed into a scalable national rewards platform serving 16M Canadians
Led research and design across multiple years to simplify reward transfers, reduce contact-centre demand, and support national-scale growth across RBC's loyalty products.
Context & Constraints
RBC Rewards operated across a complex ecosystem of legacy systems, partner programmes, and regulatory requirements — serving millions of customers with differing needs, behaviours, and financial literacy levels. As usage grew, customers increasingly struggled to understand how to earn, transfer, and redeem rewards, driving friction, errors, and high volumes of support calls. The challenge was to simplify the experience without compromising flexibility, partner relationships, or compliance requirements. The work spanned a multi-year transformation as RBC evolved its loyalty offering into Avion Rewards — scaling merchants, partners, and third-party integrations while maintaining clarity, trust, and operational stability at scale.
Key Insights
Complexity was the real problem, not lack of value
Reward transfer complexity — not lack of perceived value — was the primary driver of customer frustration and contact-centre demand.
Loyalty behaviours varied significantly by segment
Customers across segments had very different mental models and motivations, requiring adaptable but consistent experience patterns.
Clarity and predictability were the primary levers
Customers consistently prioritised knowing what would happen next — making transparency the most effective design lever, not added features.
Cross-channel clarity reduced confusion more than new features
Improving consistency and transparency across web and native app reduced errors and support demand more effectively than building new capabilities.
Approach
Designed to reduce risk and enable confident enterprise-level decision-making across RBC product and leadership teams.
Customer-first research (120+ studies)
Continuous qualitative and quantitative research across web and native apps, engaging 3,000+ participants over multiple years to maintain a live understanding of customer needs.
Cross-functional alignment
Close collaboration with product, engineering, analytics, legal, and partner teams to ensure insights were aligned with feasibility, compliance, and organisational constraints.
Iterative validation at scale
Experience improvements tested and rolled out iteratively across multiple touchpoints to validate impact before scaling nationally — reducing risk on a platform serving millions.
Role & Ownership
Senior Design Researcher → Design Lead
- Led end-to-end research and design across loyalty and rewards initiatives, spanning discovery, synthesis, experience design, and cross-team alignment.
- Owned experience strategy for key journeys, connected insights across design, product, analytics, and partner teams, and mentored designers as the platform scaled.
- Held together design strategy across 19 internal and 8 external partner teams, supporting and mentoring 7 designers as the platform grew from 4M to 16M users.
System & Capabilities Delivered
Artefacts and experiences built to simplify complexity, reduce support demand, and enable national-scale growth.
Reward transfer experience
Simplified transfer flows to reduce errors, friction, and contact-centre dependency — directly driving a 300% increase in self-serve transfers.
IA & interaction patterns
Improved clarity across loyalty journeys on web and mobile, creating consistent, predictable patterns customers could trust regardless of entry point.
Design frameworks & guidance
Enabled consistent implementation across 19 internal and 8 external partner teams while allowing for segment-specific needs and compliance requirements.
Cross-channel experience
Ensured customers received consistent, accurate information regardless of which touchpoint they used — reducing confusion and support volume at scale.
"You should be very proud of the heavy lifting you did to design such a seamless points transfer experience. The results speak to the simplicity of the solution and the impact across clients."
Jacquelina Calisto
VP Loyalty & Rewards, RBC (2018–2021)
Outcome & Impact
From fragmented loyalty ecosystem to national platform — at scale
increase in self-serve reward transfers
Reduced reliance on contact centres and significantly improved customer confidence in managing their own rewards.
user base growth
Supported a 4× expansion of the loyalty platform — from 4M to 16M — without proportional increases in operational cost or support demand.
merchants in the network
Platform scale-up supported alongside 2,000+ third-party merchants and 4 strategic partners — all while maintaining experience clarity.
Reduced support calls and confusion
Improved clarity across journeys led to fewer errors, fewer questions, and lower contact-centre demand across the national customer base.