Job Description Summary
The Manager, Customer Experience Research and Design, is responsible for leading and contributing to the Brand Strategy team and Corporate Affairs more broadly with various projects related to membership retention and growth to support the health of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Brand. Responsibilities include managing both internal and external initiatives and partnering with cross functional teams.
The Manager will be the driving force behind turning meaningful, best-in-class consumer insights and best practices into actions, and experiences that will make a difference in consumers' lives.
Frequently collaborate with matrixed stakeholders to understand business needs and context. Guide the development and execution of roadmaps to address needs and align with business priorities.
Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
Lead, facilitate and/or participate in strategy formulation, design and facilitation, concept design, qualitative research and partnering on implementation related to bringing the brand experience to life.
Strategic thinker with proven ability to build strategies from data and evidence to create recommendations and pathways towards implementation. Formulate strategies into frameworks and workstreams that make sense to not only customer experience practitioners, but also business and operations teams across the enterprise.
Responsible for delivering key consumer insights to drive the business and brand forward. Apply sound understanding of current and emerging research and experience measurement methodologies, acting as the functional expert in the application of customer practices. Synthesize, interpret, and apply information/data to establish facts and develop insights to provide new perspectives on the category, consumers, and innovation pathways.
Partner with cross-functional teams to help identify relevant business issues, research objectives and hypotheses to address brand questions and needs.
Translate research findings and insights into clear actions through compelling analysis and verbal and visual storytelling. Ability to outline how to operationalize the insights and actions in order to bring the strategy to life.
Develop hypotheses that can assist in meeting business objectives and utilizing appropriate methodologies to develop and test hypotheses, draw relevant inferences, and create recommendations to define business opportunities.
Keeps current on divisional, Association, BCBS company and industry measurement trends as input for Plan and Association decisions. Participate and contribute to ad-hoc projects that contribute to the broader team goals.
Required Education, Certifications and Experience
- Bachelor's degree in marketing, data science, research or related field, or equivalent experience.
- 6 years' experience translating insights into strategy and innovation priorities for a brand and experience conducting competitor reviews and analysis.
- 3 years' experience crafting compelling communications with storytelling skills, including communication of insights and recommendations both in writing and verbal presentations. Data visualization skills a plus.
- Experience working in a complex organization across a variety of stakeholder groups.
- Ability to be responsive to fluid, sometimes unexpected stakeholder needs.
- Strong influencing skills and ability to shape strategic direction.
- Comfort with drawing conclusions from data.
- Knowledge of human-centered design/design thinking tools and methods.
- Independent project management skills; strong attention to detail; proactivity; ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
- Ability to communicate clearly and effectively with team members, stakeholders and vendor partners.
- Solid understanding of quantitative and qualitative research, behavior science and customer experience metrics.
- Ability to coach others and build organizational talent relative to market research and strategic thought.
- Excellent time management and prioritization skills; ability to manage a flexible workload and ambiguous timelines.
- Strong interpersonal skills including positivity, professionalism, persuasiveness, and courtesy, with and a service-oriented mindset.
- Exhibits curiosity about our customers and members, and a desire to bring forth a better and richer understanding of their needs.
Preferred Education, Certifications and Experience
- 5 years' experience integrating customer insights fundamentals including primary & secondary consumer research, syndicated research, positioning & communication development, and strategic business analysis into business, innovation, and experience strategies. This includes segmentation, need states, concept and product development/validation, test and learn approaches, design/packaging testing, creative optimization and more.
- Prior healthcare experience
- Familiarity with operations/implementation
People Management No
