Background

Nationwide had a portfolio of perks and rewards through its businesses and products, but the efforts were siloed. Several internal teams desired an enterprise-wide perks and rewards program to create an engagement platform to house existing perks and rewards in a unified location, provide a platform to expand vendor partnerships, and drive business value to Nationwide.

Stakeholder Conversations

I organized several conversations with key stakeholders to define study goals and objectives, proposed a research plan, and establish touch bases to ensure continuous stakeholder-researcher alignment. Stakeholders were also invited to participant interviews to ensure they were involved with every step of research.

Goals

The goal of this study was to examine desired perks and rewards experiences among current and future Nationwide customers.

Objectives

• Gather insights into preferred perks and rewards experiences within insurance and retail spaces.
• Determine preferred perks mobile experience via concept testing of two screens containing unique features.

Methodology

This study was broken into two parts: First, I facilitated an in-depth interview to maximize information yield. Then, participants evaluated two mid-fidelity website design via comparative concept testing. General population participants were recruited from User Interviews. Participants were required to be between the ages of 25-45 and own a smartphone. Participants were interviewed one-on-one in one-hour sessions hosted on UserTesting.

Synthesis and Analysis

Over the course of two weeks, participant responses were submitted to a thematic analysis. I also incorporated notes taken in Miro by observing members of my team. I chose this method to address the generative nature of this project by identifying high-level themes.

Results

My thematic analysis revealed perks and rewards can improve feelings of customer appreciation, engagement, and relationships with the business. Customers desired a personalized, easy-to-use holistic mobile perks platform.

Recommendations

I recommended a go-forward business plan that included an all-inclusive and customizable perks and rewards app. The app should include low-effort, high-yield perks and rewards that primarily saves users time and money (as opposed to effort). Participants were also open to gamification of earning points or cash back.

Collaboration

This project was a collaborative effort across several disciplines. I received feedback from project management, marketing, technology leads, and business leads during research planning. After analyzing the results of the study, I communicated the findings back to each respective discipline to ensure the human-centered insights I uncovered were incorporated into the build and promotion of the Nationwide Perks & Rewards app page. I also prepare an annual report on how user-centric product decisions are. Finally, I have continued to partner with these individuals across the intervening years to drive meaningful change into the product.

Shareout & Impact

Results and recommendation were delivered to the aforementioned collaborators via Microsoft PowerPoint. I also hosted several working sessions to ensure research recommendations were incorporated into design creation. This round of research was the first of many that ultimately led to increased revenue and improved customer retention.