Hello!
Peter Allan
I didn’t fully understand it this way at the time but my curiosity about design started early in my career when I was working as a customer service advisor in a 1990’s call centre for one of the UK’s largest insurers. Straight out of training and onto the floor, talking to dozens of real life customers on the phone every day, I noticed a tension between the organization’s need to achieve results and its need to solve those very customers’ real life problems. I began wondering to myself why these two goals were constantly at odds and it wasn’t long before I was openly questioning what we could do to make things better.
Thanks to each and every one of my bosses’ tolerance for my curiosity and their support of my desire to make things better for customers and for the business I was able to explore and experiment with different methodologies, such as Lean Six Sigma, Design Thinking, and Agile, until I created a toolbox of methods. After 25 years as a design professional, I’m still experimenting because our context is always evolving and no two problems are the same. What I do know for sure is that every organization has a unique formula for winning and keeping customers and design thinking is an approach to uncovering that formula. My mission is to help organizations find their unique formula for winning and keeping customers.
As a former competitive formation skydiver, aspiring ukulele player, and improv dabbler, I believe that team performance, creativity and play are all important parts of being an effective problem solver. I bring my full life experience to my work to help organizations get unstuck and solve their trickiest problems.
The Official Bio
Peter Allan
Design Thinker | Podcaster | Customer Experience Leader
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Peter Allan is a design professional who helps organizations win and keep customers. He has 25 years of experience working in organizations in the UK and NZ. Peter has helped mid-to-large-sized companies across multiple industries embed design practices and build design capabilities to drive customer outcomes. As an associate of the Design Thinker Institute, Peter collaborates with organizations of all sizes to unlock innovation and reimagine how products and services are delivered.
Associate – Design Thinker Institute
2025 - Present
Design Practice Lead – Mitre 10
2022 - 2024
Head of Design Thinking Capability – ASB
2018 - 2022
Design Practice Leader – Vodafone
2017 - 2018
Customer Experience Design Manager – Vodafone
Various Role – Royal Bank of Scotland
1997 - 2009
Sales & Claims Operations Continuous Improvement Expert
Finance Operations Project Manager
Partnerships MI and Commissions Manager, UKI Partnerships
Partnerships Management Information Analysts UKI Partnership
Management Development Programme Trainee, Green Flag
Customer Complaints Advisor, Direct Line Insurance
Insurance Telesales Consultant, Direct Lines Insurance
2015 - 2017
Business Experience Design Manager – Vodafone
2014 - 2015
Customer Experience Designer – Vodafone
2013 - 2014
Process Transformation Lead – Vodafone
2010 - 2013