Member Experience Research Manager

AAA • Costa Mesa, CA

5d • Onsite

About The Position

The Member Experience Research Manager role manages the member experience research team, which has an existing CX (member satisfaction) program across all its business lines - with the future goal of creating an end-to-end view of the member experience. The position owns Voice of Member (VOM)/CX satisfaction research with oversight over the custom strategic research arm of the market research team, with accountability for modernizing AAA's research capabilities, elevating performance, and positioning the function as a trusted source of insight for senior leaders. The role manages a team of 9–15 direct and indirect reports and oversees the research vendor and technology budget.

Requirements

• Bachelors Marketing Required
• 10+ years Market research, consumer/member insights, or customer experience research, ideally in insurance, membership, or financial services. Required
• 7-9 years People leadership experience, including managing managers or teams of comparable size and complexity. Required
• Strong executive presence and ability to distill complex research into decision-ready narratives.
• Experience modernizing or rebuilding a legacy VOC/VOM/CX program, including methodology and tooling.
• Skilled in both people leadership and hands-on research craft.
• Experience selecting and managing research vendors within a defined budget.
• Fluent across qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys, interviews, journey research, online communities, and satisfaction measurement.
• Comfortable improving and rebuilding a challenged function; energized by building rather than maintaining.
• High tolerance for ambiguity, with a clear point of view on where the function needs to go.
• Strong judgment on when to escalate issues versus resolve them independently.

Nice To Haves

• Masters Preferred

Responsibilities

• Modernize Voice of Member programs, including satisfaction and journey-level feedback, to reflect current member needs, channels, and touchpoints across insurance and membership.
• Build an end-to-end member view by integrating feedback across policyholders, members, products, services, and operational touchpoints.
• Lead a broader research portfolio that includes behavioral science, brand and loyalty research, segmentation, community panels, and custom qualitative and quantitative studies tied to business priorities.
• Serve as a credible partner to senior leadership by translating research findings into clear, decision-ready recommendations.
• Establish intake and prioritization processes that focus the team on the highest-value business questions.
• Own the research vendor and platform ecosystem, including selection, contract negotiation, and budget management.
• Set research methodology standards to ensure rigor, consistency, and clear synthesis across ongoing measurement and custom studies.
• Identify and quantify member pain points, unmet needs, and opportunities for improvement.
• Partner cross-functionally with product, marketing, claims, digital, and operations teams to embed member insight into decision-making.
• Understand the changing business needs and goals and be able to quickly make decisions and develop marketing research plans that will meet the goals of the business while meeting the success metrics.
• Makes decisions quickly and independently.
• Monitor the performance of their employees and assist or intervene when necessary.
• Responsible for anticipating potential issues and mitigating or resolving those issues by working with multiple departments and within multiple levels of the organization.

Benefits

• Health coverage for medical, dental, vision
• 401(K) saving plans with company match AND Pension
• Tuition assistance
• Floating holidays and PTO for community volunteer programs
• Paid parental leave
• Wellness programs
• Employee discounts (membership, insurance, travel, entertainment, services and more!)

What This Job Offers

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