WEX Mobility Small Biz: Exploring Virtual Cards

Generative Research to explore the viability of this payment type and explore the mental models of virtual cards.

On contract - The Commercial Marketing team asked UX Research to support an effort that would engage the Small Business team - A newly acquired start-up, to explore the positioning and value of virtual cards for small businesses with commercial fleets while introducing them to UX Research - and welcoming them into the WEX Mobility Family.
ROLE
Contracted to provide research leadership and guidance to the product team's new product suite initiative. This project is a side-project, and a one-time engagement with this team.
CHALLENGE
The Commercial Marketing Lead reached out to the Research team requesting help for a team that did not have allocated research time. She was working with the Small Business Team (a newly acquired start-up) to create an offering and positioning for a new option - Virtual Cards. The team had a number of questions about the mental models and possible hurdles, and she saw the opportunity to introduce the team to the benefit of being part of a larger company - a research team, as well as the value of more formal research.
CONSIDERATIONS
The Product had less than 100 active users, and we did not have direct access due to account agreements, and a lack of opt-in for research participation.
The team has two people engaged with customers. One engaging as a customer analyst (former teacher) with a couple of customers in construction, and the other (Marketing Researcher) who had a focus on the industry and potential markets to target. 
The Small Business team has a rapid cadence, and is a tight-knit crew. They are not integrated into the larger WEX Company, and I was given a heads-up that the team had been resistant to working with other teams at WEX.
APPROACH
I am familiar with the challenges the teams of acquired start-ups go through as they are integrated into larger companies. Although it was not the Small Biz team that engaged me, I tried to actively engage them - particularly those responsible for the customer and industry perspectives. I worked with the Commercial Marketing lead who initiated the project to draft the Plan and Guide, and then reviewed with the Small Biz team to review and discuss the activity - and make changes. 
I harnessed the research teams established templates for the research plan (Google Doc), study guide (Google Doc), and report (Google Slides) for the foundations and artifacts for the study. And I used Google chat to engage the team and encourage their participation in watching and notetaking in UserTesting.com as they observed. I gave them guidance on how to use notetaking within UserTesting.com. I praised and encouraged their notes and ability to "silently observe" live sessions - even on the weekend. 
Given the Small Biz team had only engaged with a few small construction company contacts, I wanted to emphasize the vast variations within the small business market. I have had exposure to small business users in previous work. I also needed to explicitly speak to how their team's "empathy interviews" influence and inform formal research. Or as the Director of Research positioned it - "Research with more Rigor". 
I worked collaboratively with the UX Designer who was very busy at this time. I ensured he had a voice and was in agreement with each step.
The overall approach was to conduct this smaller qualitative study to empower Commercial Marketing and the Small Biz Team to move forward with a knowledge base to make preliminary product decisions as well as engage an outside agency for a broad - quantitative study to establish saliency and frequency of identified themes.

Commercial Marketing worked with me to outline the study, and then I reviewed and refined with the Small Business Team.

Throughout the study, I communicated how the understanding of customers and customer and user research is conducted in conjunction with other data such as empathy interviews and site visits with analytics, help desk tickets, etc. and the impact on Risks of failure and Confidence on success.

I created slides that explicitly answered their questions including representative quotes. I avoided using any references to ratios since this was a qualitative study of small businesses (many variations). This was to stress to the team that we do not know how this represents the overall population/targeted customers and setting the foundation for a quantitative study.

With the high engagement of the 3 - Commerical Marketing, Small Biz Marketing, and Customer Analyst, I selected 5 sessions that I thought represented and highlighted the variations of attitudes and mental models of virtual cards.

I wrapped up the findings with a research perspective - the heuristics and early identified needs - noting a broad study would be the logical next step.  I worked with the UX Designer to incorporate his priority themes and heuristics relating to what he was trying to stress to the team.

I created reels for each theme relating to the team's questions and themes.

The recommendations supported the goal of bringing the Small Business team into the larger company and to establish how research is conducted at WEX. Recommendations included focusing on industries with more complex needs to help ensure that the technical foundation established with the first version has the potential to evolve and support multiple industries.

OUTCOMES
The Small Business team dropped communication after the report. They did express appreciation for the collaboration and engagement noting their integration with WEX had been "rough" up to that point. They did watch the sessions themselves and drew their own conclusions. At the end of my contract, there was a heavy focus on the Small Business team's work with a panel of highly experienced senior leaders giving feedback and pushing back. I was ping'd by senior leadership about my study and asked for my perspective on a few questions. 
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