What’s New With USAA Labs?

[Angela Caban USAA]

If you haven’t heard about USAA Labs yet, you must be wondering what it is? USAA Labs is a community for members that showcases newly launched innovations and awards. It gives members the opportunity to innovate by providing feedback on new innovations, concepts and exclusive pilots. The great thing about this is that it is open to all USAA members with online access to usaa.com.

USAA Labs will showcase some of the most recent innovations and innovation awards. Members also can enroll in pilot programs, which gives them early access to exciting new features, products, services and tools!

We’ve highlighted USAA Labs here on Community before, so why another blog post? What’s new and why should members know all about it?

I have reached out to Christee Kahn, a Strategic Innovation Manager at USAA to ask her what’s new with USAA Labs.

Angela: Hi Christee, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me again about USAA Labs. We’ve noticed USAA Labs has a new design, why the change?

Christee: Thank you for the opportunity, Angela. Our goal is providing a world class innovation website to our members. We continually improve USAA Labs by listening to member feedback, developing new features, and working closely with our colleagues across USAA who represent different areas of our business to add their newly launched innovations to the website. 

We’re excited to introduce a refreshed look and feel to the website, featuring more content and exciting new innovations. We were able to streamline some of our processes, making it easier and faster for members to enroll in our pilot programs. On our mobile site, we improved the experience by adding “swipe” functionality as members view content.

Angela: Could you tell us what USAA Labs has in store for members this year?

Christee: USAA Labs is working on some very exciting new initiatives!

Our next major update will include a feature we’re very proud of and have been planning for a while. USAA members will soon have the ability to submit their own solutions to USAA Labs through Innovation Challenges and sponsored projects featured on the website. Members submitting winning solutions may be eligible to receive rewards and cool prizes!

We’re also developing a set of innovation badges that will be awarded to members for participating in pilots, providing feedback, submitting solutions, and winning challenges. We hope members have fun with this and view it as some extra motivation to participate.

Angela: That sounds great! You mentioned participating in pilots. Can you explain what pilots are on USAA Labs?

Christee: Absolutely! For a pilot, we typically invite a small group of USAA members to try a new experience, product, or service with the expectation that they’ll provide feedback, which we’ll use to make improvements before making it available to the rest of the membership.

Angela: What can members expect after completing a pilot program? What types of updates are there?

Christee: We’ll publish the results for each pilot on our Results page, where members can learn how their feedback helped us innovate. We display key themes of feedback we collected during the pilot, share updates we made based on that feedback, and provide the final results of the pilot program.  

Angela: How do members get notified about pilot updates?

Christee: We have a notifications page on USAA Labs where members can enroll to receive alerts related to pilot program updates, status changes, and next steps. In the future, members will receive notifications to the delivery channel they have setup on the USAA.com preferences page, including email, text, push notifications, and social media.

Angela: When can members expect to see new pilots on USAA Labs?

Christee: Check back often because they’re continually being added! As our business teams and partners release new innovative projects, we’ll add their pilot programs to USAA Labs.

What questions do you have about USAA Labs? Share with us in the comments below.

Related Posts:

Introducing USAA Labs: Member-driven innovation

Going Behind the scenes at USAA Headquarters for DigitalMilEx™

About the blogger: Angela Caban is an Army National Guard spouse, published author and branding expert. In 2010, she founded the Homefront United Network, a military spouse and family support blog created to assist spouses who do not live near an installation, but also focusing on bridging the gap between National Guard, Reserve and Active Duty spouses. She has an extensive background in Human Resources and Communications, with her Bachelor’s in Business Administration and a Master’s in Human Resources. Angela resides in the beautiful Garden State of New Jersey with her husband and two children.

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