Editor's note: Brian O'Neill, CMSWire Contributor and former chief client officer for FIS, wrote for CX and other teams in his former organization a series of articles. Each were titled, “The Path ... " with each edition being a new take. For example, he would discuss culture, leadership, ownership, purpose, etc. In his six-plus years in his CX role, he sent out 286 notes with the intention to empower, reinforce and frame his company's mission by sharing insights to help his team improve its game and increase its level of engagement in what it wanted to accomplish. He revives some of these notes and adds some current perspective in this Fall 2022 CMSWire series, which begins today with Part 1.
Desire to Improve Employee, Customer Experience
On May 21, 2016, I sent out the very first edition of The Path (to Excellence) to the FIS Global Retail Payments team. I had become the chief client officer in March, and I quickly realized that we needed a single point of connection and a shared journey for us to improve the employee (EX) and the client experience (CX).
Over the course of the next six-plus years, with the help of my team and contributions from my colleagues, we published 286 editions of The Path. No. That is not a typo. 286 emails over six years.
What started as a weekly update on my travels and client meetings turned into a critical weekly communication where we not only recognized great work, shared insights into what we were doing as a company, but, more importantly, helped foster a culture that would be focused on experiences and delivering excellence.
In that initial message I shared the following:
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What Is a Path to Excellence?
So, what is a path to excellence? In short, it is a journey. Our journey. The journey of the entire Client Relations Team as we challenge ourselves and everything we do to be singularly focused on delivering the best possible client experience in every interaction. Excellence, by definition, means being superior, or, in other words, better than the competition.
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To be certain, it does not come easily, nor is it achieved quickly. And it is not a destination that you arrive at. Rather, it is something that we must constantly pursue. The joy of a goal, any goal, is that it keeps you focused on what you want to achieve. It is in that striving to attain the goal where excellence is achieved. And it is important to note: excellence does not mean perfection.
We will not be perfect, but we can be excellent. Every time.
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About This Series: Quest to Be Excellent
I thought it may be helpful to revisit The Path and to share these insights more broadly with a larger audience in the hope that perhaps it can inspire, steer or simply provide some insights into a shared journey. The first edition went to roughly 700 colleagues, and the last one I sent on May 2, 2022 went to my team of 6,500 and another 3,500 or so colleagues across all of FIS that asked to be on the distribution list. It was an absolute honor to make this happen every week, and now I look forward to sharing with each of you . . . share, pass along, and consume.
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