Customer Experience & Research VP - Payments

U.S. Bank • Minneapolis, MN

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

At U.S. Bank, we’re on a journey to do our best. Helping the customers and businesses we serve to make better and smarter financial decisions and enabling the communities we support to grow and succeed. We believe it takes all of us to bring our shared ambition to life, and each person is unique in their potential. A career with U.S. Bank gives you a wide, ever-growing range of opportunities to discover what makes you thrive at every stage of your career. Try new things, learn new skills and discover what you excel at—all from Day One. Job Description The VP – Customer Experience & Research - Payments is a senior leader responsible for shaping the Payments customer experience strategy by translating deep customer, market, and industry insights into meaningful product, experience, and operating model improvements. This role leads a team of customer experience and research professionals and serves as the enterprise authority on customer intelligence for PCS. The leader continuously synthesizes internal performance data, customer feedback, and external market signals to identify where experiences, products, and capabilities must evolve to meet changing customer expectations and competitive dynamics. Operating at the intersection of customer, product, and strategy, this leader ensures customer insights are not only understood—but actively drive prioritization, investment decisions, and measurable experience improvements across the Payments portfolio.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience; Masters degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in customer experience, research, insights, product strategy, or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated success translating customer insights into business, product, and experience outcomes at scale.

Nice To Haves

• Deep understanding of payments, financial services, or adjacent regulated industries.
• Proven ability to influence across complex, matrixed organizations without direct authority.
• Exceptional executive communication, storytelling, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience leading customer experience research for consumer and/or small business financial products.
• Strong partnership experience with Product Management, Experience Design, and Analytics teams.
• Familiarity with agile product development and human‑centered design methodologies.
• Experience integrating multiple data sources into cohesive insight frameworks.
• Operates with an enterprise mindset and strategic perspective.
• Champions customer obsession and evidence‑based decision making.
• Balances strategic vision with pragmatic execution.
• Models inclusive, transparent, and collaborative leadership behaviors

Responsibilities

• Customer Experience Research & Insight Strategy Establish and lead the end‑to‑end customer experience research and insights strategy for Payments. Define and maintain a forward‑looking research agenda aligned to business priorities, product roadmaps, and emerging industry trends. Oversee qualitative and quantitative research, journey analysis, behavioral insights, and feedback mechanisms to develop a holistic view of customer needs, pain points, and adoption drivers. Ensure appropriate research rigor, including sampling strategies, statistical methods, and confidence thresholds, to support enterprise‑level decision making. Guide teams in applying mixed‑methods research to produce actionable, defensible insights. Establish clear distinctions between exploratory, evaluative, and decision‑grade research to ensure the right level of rigor for each business question. Ensure insights are synthesized into clear, compelling narratives that inform executive decisions.
• Customer Experience Measurement & Analytics Own the CX measurement architecture across Payments, including CSAT, NPS, CES, VoC, behavioral telemetry, and operational experience metrics. Define experience success measures tied to business outcomes such as growth, retention, usage, servicing efficiency, and risk reduction. Partner with Analytics and Data teams to integrate journey‑level metrics, digital behavior data, and operational KPIs into a cohesive CX performance framework. Establish standards for signal quality, statistical rigor, and insight confidence across all CX and research outputs. Ensure experience measurement enables root‑cause diagnosis and action, not just reporting.
• Industry & Market Intelligence Continuously monitor payments, fintech, and customer experience trends to identify implications for PCS products, experiences, and capabilities. Benchmark PCS experience performance against industry peers and best‑in‑class experiences across financial services and adjacent industries. Translate external market signals into forward‑looking recommendations for experience and product evolution.
• Insight‑to‑Action Enablement Partner closely with Product, Design, Marketing, Operations, Analytics, and Technology leaders to embed customer insights into product strategy, experience design, and delivery execution. Identify where products, journeys, policies, or operating models must be changed, enhanced, or retired based on customer evidence. Champion a closed‑loop approach where insights drive action, outcomes are measured, and learnings are continuously refined. Establish governance to track insight‑driven decisions, actions taken, and realized outcomes.
• Leadership & Team Development Lead, mentor, and develop a high‑performing team of customer experience researchers and insight professionals. Establish best practices, standards, and governance for customer research and insight generation. Foster a culture of curiosity, rigor, and customer obsession.
• Executive Influence & Storytelling Serve as a trusted advisor to senior PCS and enterprise leaders on customer experience priorities and implications. Translate complex insights into clear, compelling executive narratives that drive alignment and action. Advocate for the customer perspective in strategic planning, investment decisions, and transformation initiatives.

Benefits

• Healthcare (medical, dental, vision)
• Basic term and optional term life insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability
• Pregnancy disability and parental leave
• 401(k) and employer-funded retirement plan
• Paid vacation (from two to five weeks depending on salary grade and tenure)
• Up to 11 paid holiday opportunities
• Adoption assistance
• Sick and Safe Leave accruals of one hour for every 30 worked, up to 80 hours per calendar year unless otherwise provided by law

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive