Bunnings

Reimagining a trade membership to grow loyalty and reduce cost to serve

Role

CX Lead & Design Manager

Responsibilities

Strategy formulation, stakeholder alignment, research, concept development, prototyping with numbers, detailed design and leadership of cross-disciplinary delivery teams.

Team

Bunnings internal (SD, UX, Tech Architecture, IT, Salesforce & Marketing), Deloitte Digital.

Bunnings is one of Australia's most trusted retailers, generating $7b+ in annual revenue — with more than 35% of that flowing through its 1.3m-strong PowerPass trade membership. Despite its scale, the membership was underperforming: sign-up drop-off was high, perceived value was low, and the cost of serving members manually was growing.

The task

The "Reimagine PowerPass" project set out to transform a discount-driven membership into a loyalty programme that genuinely supported the working lives of tradies, builders and organisations. To do that, the experience needed to:

•Reduce friction in digital sign-up and onboarding
•Increase the perceived and actual value of membership
•Create moments of recognition and delight across the member lifecycle
•Reduce the manual cost of serving members through smarter digital touchpoints

The aims

→ Decrease sign-up drop-off by 10–20% by redesigning the digital onboarding flow and resolving known UI and implementation issues (currently almost half of all online sign-up attempts fail at the final stages).
→ Remove reliance on manual Trade Specialist onboarding calls, shifting members to a digital-first Welcome Series without any loss of revenue or relationship quality.
→ Increase time-to-value by introducing an immediate digital PowerPass card, eliminating wait times between sign-up and first purchase.
→ Address structural issues in Salesforce master and sub-account configurations that were creating downstream membership problems.
→ Reduce member churn through intentional engagement moments — from everyday interactions to key periods like tax time.

Issues identified

→ Almost half of all online sign-up attempts result in drop-off in the final stages, due to poor UI and a fragmented implementation, representing significant lost revenue.
→ Perceived low value of membership leads to costly member downtrade and churn (seen as few benefits beyond a storewide discount).
→ Member onboarding is highly manual, requiring dedicated Trade Specialist call time. This yields little measurable uplift in member engagement or spend.
→ PowerPass is the front door for over 35% of Bunnings' revenue. Underperformance is a key business risk.

We faciliated collaborative, cross-disciplinary workshops to identify a future state experience for PowerPass.

Customer journey map — PowerPass desired-state journey: Discover → Join → Onboard

A desired-state journey map capturing the end-to-end experience from first discovery of PowerPass through to active membership — used to align stakeholders and define the programme's scope.

Approach

01 –
Strategic inputs
Researched customer experiences across key trade archetypes and defined an emerging membership strategy grounded in four pillars: Clearer Proposition, Greater Recognition, Service Ecosystem, and Intentional Moments.
02 –
Securing stakeholders
Facilitated broad stakeholder involvement and consultation across Bunnings teams and Deloitte Digital to build shared ownership of the programme's direction.
03 –
Prioritisation
Identified low-hanging fruit (particularly cost savings from manual onboarding) and structured the programme into streams to capture value earlier.
04 –
Identifying value
Prototyped with numbers in collaboration with Data Analytics to quantify opportunity areas and pressure-test concepts before committing to delivery.
05 –
Setting up teams
Built cross-disciplinary teams around each value stream and led CX discovery activities with Deloitte Digital as delivery partner.
06 –
Informed target architecture
Collaborated with Tech teams to define the target Salesforce architecture and solve for the desired member experience, including a revised account structure to address known sub-account issues.
07 –
Concept development
Explored multiple membership concepts, from a specialist tradie community to celebratory lifecycle moments, evaluating each against member needs and business impact.
08 –
Finalised discovery
Completed detailed design across two key programme streams: Onboarding (sign-up, digital card, Welcome Series) and Member Levels (tier structure, recognition, differentiated benefits).

Small moments, big impressions

A key strategic insight was that loyalty isn't built at the point of sale, it's built in the moments in between. Drawing on Rory Sutherland's principle that the most potent brand moments are often very small, the programme identified everyday touchpoints — a milestone anniversary, a tax-time nudge, a first-purchase acknowledgement, that could be redesigned to reinforce the value of membership and deepen the relationship with members.

Impact

→ Improved onboarding flows to reduce sign-up drop-off by 10–20%, addressing known UI failure points and simplifying the final stages of the digital application.
→ Removed 85% of onboarding calls with no loss of revenue, saving 120k+ hours of Trade Specialist effort annually through a digital Welcome Series.
→ Decreased time to initial purchase and app adoption through an immediate digital PowerPass card, removing wait times between sign-up and active use.
→ Addressed key issues in Salesforce account structures, resolving master and sub-account configurations that were affecting how memberships were being used and measured.
→ Implemented a Customer Lifecycle dashboard with Analytics teams to track and proactively reduce member churn.
→ Identified membership delight moments through everyday interactions and key periods (e.g. tax time), keeping members engaged and preventing passive attrition.
→ Delivered a redesigned member experience UI, addressing known drop-off points and uplifting digital assets across the onboarding and in-membership experience.

Reimagining a trade membership to grow loyalty and reduce cost to serve

Issues identified

Approach

Small moments, big impressions

Impact

Get in touch to learn more