Quick 6 With Parrish Arturi, Fidelity Investments

In this feature on the Customer Experience Matters blog, we ask 6 questions of different customer experience leaders.

• Name: Parrish Arturi
• Title: SVP, Customer Experience
• Company: Fidelity Investments
• Length of time on the job: 1 year
• Previous position: SVP, Personal and Workplace Investing Online Channels

1. What do you most like about your role?

Working across multiple areas to help the rest of our organization live up to our core value of “The Customer Is Always First”. Fidelity helps millions of people accomplish their goals and dreams, and having the ability to influence that in a scaled fashion is really powerful.

2. What are you most proud of accomplishing?

Getting the organization – from top to bottom – excited about transforming our customers experience and understanding that Customer Experience is not a project but something that needs to be in our corporate DNA.

3. What has been the most surprising challenge?

That at the end of the day this work is all about change management – it’s hard work getting multiple functional areas across different levels moving in the same direction. That said, it’s incredibly fulfilling when you hear others talking about customers and the difference they can make for associates and customers in their work.

4. How would you describe where your company is on its customer experience journey?

We actually have a great foundation from which to build, which includes having a legacy of innovation and committment to doing right by customers. We are mid-way in our journey – we have a solid strategy and program plan and are now in the midst of executing against it. There is a huge organizational focus to achieve our vision of providing the best customer experience in our industry, and it feels very real now that we have a number of tangible elements in place.

5. What initiatives are you currently most excited about?

I’m really excited about 2 things: First, is the work we’re doing around end-to-end process improvement, which includes everything from addressing chronic issues that customers and associates have told us about to diagnosing and making sure we are flawless in those moments that matter most to customers. Second is the internal and external communications work we’re doing to drive excitement with both associates and customers about the fact that we’ve heard their feedback, are turning that into action and are closing the loop with them.

6. What advice do you have for someone who is about to take on a similar role?

Take the time to create a gameplan and don’t get sucked into the latest issue of the day. People will assume that because your title or mandate is around customer experience that every problem is yours to solve. Having a gameplan for the elements of the business system that need to get established or improved, and being diligent about getting wins along the way, makes a huge difference.

Extra credit question: What would people be surprised to find out about you?

Before and after grad school I traveled the country with a friend in a beat up Jeep visiting most of the Major League (and some minor league) ballparks. And if you didn’t guess… I’m partial to Fenway.