What did I do at Hilton?
While at Hilton, my research responsibility covered anything related to the customer experience when booking a room online, a large part of the user journey on our digital platforms, and a large portion of customer traffic. It encompassed everything from selecting a room and adding extras to checking out.
During my time at Hilton, I was the primary research support for the rolling out of several new products. This meant that I needed to make sure every decision concerning anything from product development to marketing and communications was informed by research. I represented our customers and users and presented their sentiments to various departments, breaking silos in the process. I was the primary consultant for things related to users in our booking flow.
When Hilton rolled out its pet-friendly hotel catalog, I conducted a competitive analysis. I also developed a large survey to help our product and business teams understand what expectations travelers had when it came to hotel accommodations for their pets. When Hilton was considering a partnership with a large appliance company, I created and analyzed a large-scale survey gathering insights about customer’s hygiene routines when traveling. I was also responsible for maintaining our research archive and reminding stakeholders of what we already knew and when we were prepared to make a decision.
What did my day to day look like?
My work on the “booking flow” consists of developing qualitative research tests and surveys to answer questions from product and design teams and communicating insights/recommendations to stakeholders in a way that makes those insights actionable. My goal is to make sure the insights culled from interviews and surveys don’t just sit in company archives but are realized in the design and product decisions being made. I often need to highlight gaps in the research archives and call out our team’s assumptions in order to validate them before we get too far in a project.
What tools did I use?
I used usertesting.com to recruit, manage study logistics, and analyze data using their dashboard and tagging features.
For large-scale surveys I conducted, I used Dynata to recruit and distribute surveys
and Qualtrics to build the survey and analyze responses via their dashboards and analytics tools.
I worked in a pod with a ui/ux designer and project manager. They were my primary stakeholders and team members. Additionally, I worked with our business operations stakeholders to prioritize research objectives and align them with business KPIs. However, as Hilton was a large company, I was prepared to collaborate and liaison with our marketing researchers and business analytics teams to support customer insights I was developing.
Who did I work with?
What are some other things I did?
As a researcher on the manager track at Hilton, I participated in research operations management. This meant I would sit in on vendor meetings and help the research director determine which tools we should incorporate into our team while remaining in budget.
I also helped manage our intern and mentor researchers who I referred and joined our team.
I also facilitated prioritization workshops with the product and business teams.