Member Experience Research Manager

AAA Auto Club Enterprises; Costa Mesa (CA); On-site; USD 146,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

401(K) saving plans with company match

Pension

Tuition assistance

Floating holidays and PTO

Paid parental leave

Wellness programs

Employee discounts

Job summary

AAA Auto Club Enterprises seeks a strategic Leader to head the Member Experience Research team, owning the Voice of Member program and driving an end-to-end view of the member journey across insurance and membership lines. You will oversee a team of researchers, manage vendor relationships and budgets, and elevate insights to inform senior leadership decisions.

This role emphasizes building, not just maintaining, a legacy CX function, and requires strong executive presence and cross-functional

Qualifications

• 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 escape issues versus resolve them independently.

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 methodologies 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. The manager must also 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.
• Occasional travel to off-site business meetings or conferences. (5% proficiency)

Skills

Strong executive presence

Qualitative methods

Quantitative methods

People leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Marketing

Master's degree

Job description

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.

Job Duties

• Modernize Voice of Member programs, including satisfaction and journey-level feedback, to reflect current member needs, channels, and touchpoints across insurance and membership.
• Build anend-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, communitypanels,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 researchmethodologystandards to ensure rigor, consistency, and clear synthesis across ongoing measurement and custom studies.
• Identifyand 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. The manager must also 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.

Qualifications

• Bachelors Marketing Required
• Masters Preferred
• 10+ years Market research, consumer/member insights, or customer experience research, ideally in insurance, membership, or financial services. Required
• 7-9 years Peopleleadership 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, includingmethodologyand tooling.
• Skilled in bothpeopleleadership 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 satisfactionmeasurement.
• Comfortable improving and rebuilding a challenged function; energized by building rather thanmaintaining.
• High tolerance for ambiguity, with a clear point of view on where the function needs to go.
• Strong judgment on when to escape issues versus resolve them independently.

Travel Requirements

• Occasional travel to off‑site business meetings or conferences. (5% proficiency)

The starting pay range for this position is:

$145,900.00 - $194,600.00

Additionally, for full time positions, you will be eligible to participate in our incentive program based upon the achievement of organization, team and personal performance.

Remarkable 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!)

Auto Club Enterprises is the largest club within the national AAA federation. We have nearly 17,000 employees in 24 states helping more than 18 million members. The strength of our organization is our employees. Bringing together and supporting different cultures, backgrounds, personalities, and strengths creates a team capable of delivering legendary, lifetime service to our members. When we embrace our diversity – we win. All of Us! With our national brand recognition, long‑standing reputation since 1900, and constantly growing membership, we are seeking career‑minded, service‑driven professionals to join our team.

“Through dedicated employees we proudly deliver legendary service and beneficial products that provide members peace of mind and value.”

AAA is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Our organization participates in E-Verify

The Automobile Club of Southern California will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable federal, state, and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance (FCIHO), the Unincorporated Los Angeles County (ULAC) regulation, and the California Fair Chance Act (CFCA).