Finding the ‘So What?’ Behind Your Research
How First National Bank of Omaha partnered with Fuel Cycle to move from weeks-long research cycles to same-day insights — and build a truly customer-led organization.
The Client
First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO) is a financial institution providing a full range of banking and financial services. The Consumer Insights team conducts continuous research to monitor satisfaction with core products and services, gather ideas for CX improvement, and inform product and strategy decisions across the organization.
The Challenge
FNBO's Insights team had the ambition to be a truly customer-led organization — but their research tools couldn't keep pace. Each project took 4–8 weeks to design, launch, and analyze, making it nearly impossible to test smaller, faster iterations. They needed a way to reach a broader, more diverse audience at the speed of innovation, without the setup overhead that was slowing them down.
Customer-Led, Continuous, and Efficient Research
FNBO partnered with Fuel Cycle to build an owned customer research panel — giving the Insights team direct, ongoing access to customers on their own terms, at the organization's pace.
Rather than relying on a single method, the team expanded into a full toolkit: surveys for scale, discussion boards for depth, heat maps for visual feedback, and live virtual IDIs for real-time exploration. The result was a research operation that could flex to any question, at any speed.
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1Owned research panel. FNBO built a dedicated customer panel through Fuel Cycle, creating a standing pool of engaged participants ready to provide feedback — eliminating the lengthy recruitment and setup that had previously bottlenecked every project.
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2Multi-method research toolkit. The team moved beyond surveys to incorporate discussion boards, heat maps, and live virtual IDIs — meeting customers in the format that worked best for them and generating richer, more actionable insight.
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3Continuous, proactive insight delivery. With faster cycles, the Insights team began anticipating stakeholder needs — running research on emerging issues before being asked, staying ahead of the business rather than catching up to it.
A Full Toolkit for Every Research Need
Fuel Cycle gave FNBO the flexibility to choose the right method for every question — from quick quantitative reads to deep qualitative exploration.
Now, we typically get 90% of the responses from a project within the first 24–36 hours, which allows us to give our project teams insights they can take action on immediately.
From Weeks to Hours — Across the Board
By embracing a more comprehensive, customer-centric research approach, FNBO elevated its insights strategy across every dimension that mattered.
Recognizing When You're Ready for Change
The most important step FNBO took wasn't adopting a new tool — it was recognizing when their existing process was no longer good enough. Whether that signal comes from stakeholder feedback, competitive pressure, or a growing gap between what your team can deliver and what the business needs, acting on that recognition is what creates the conditions for real change.
Setting the stage matters as much as the change itself. FNBO took time to understand what needed to shift, how new tools would be deployed, and how to synthesize results in a way that met each stakeholder's needs — which meant the transition delivered value from day one.
A flexible approach to research isn't just a capability upgrade — it's what allows an insights team to earn and keep a seat at the strategic table.
Ready to Unlock Faster Customer Insights?
See how Fuel Cycle can help your team move from weeks-long research cycles to actionable intelligence in hours.
- Owned research panel built on your own customers
- Surveys, discussion boards, heat maps, and IDIs in one platform
- 90% of responses within 24–36 hours of launch