Most organizations seem to view the customer experience as an either/or matter – as in, either they were satisfied, or they weren't. If a customer seems satisfied, then – according to most companies – we have succeeded. If they are not, we failed. That simple, binary perspective oversimplifies the role that customer experience plays in a peak performance culture. The fact of the matter is that there exists a continuum of customer experiences that create four types of customers:

• The Evangelist: This is the best version of a customer. They are delighted by your offerings and echo that enthusiasm on social media channels, reviews, and at parties. They are different than your other satisfied clients in that they recruit others to your brand. They are loyal, forgiving of an occasional misstep, and very hard for your competitor to pry away. If you have a loyalty program, they use it without fail. In the wine industry, they join your club. They are a steadfast source of revenues and help you grow your brand by singing your praises to others. They are rare and extremely valuable.
• The Satisfied Customer: This is the most common form of customer. They have experienced your products/services and have been satisfied. Maybe not blown away, but not disappointed. They don't refer you to others because, in their mind, you have done nothing particularly impressive to distinguish yourself beyond meeting their expectations. As a result, a competitor who promises more or charges less or is more convenient can quickly take this customer's business from you. Transient in their patronage and not possessing any brand loyalty, these customers become industry currency with competing organizations chasing this revenue around to achieve their short‐term fiscal goals rather than identifying how to convert them to Evangelists. Finding a way to move the Satisfied Customer to the Evangelist is a constant discussion in the organizational boardroom.
• The Heretic Customer: In my opinion, this is the most underrated and underappreciated customer. Sure, we would like all our customers to be Evangelists, but the reality is that businesses and their ability to execute on their brand promises are imperfect. We are bound to fall short of our customer's expectations on occasion. The Heretic Customer lets us know when we do. That may not be comfortable for us in the moment, but it allows us to practice good service recovery and make improvements to our operation. Often, a positive response to a Heretic Customer can lead them to become an Evangelist. Think about it. In any relationship, you never know how strong it is until something goes wrong. If you prove to your customer that you can effectively fix a problem that they have expressed, it is far more likely that they will remain loyal to you than the average Satisfied Customer.
• The Unsatisfied Customer: This is the most dangerous of customers. These are people who have had an unsatisfactory experience with your business but did not bring it to your attention. Rather than manifesting the behaviors of the Heretic Customer, they simply disappear without a word of feedback to you. They do, however, tell a bunch of other current and potential clients about their dissatisfaction. They are damaging to your brand and restrictive to your ability to improve your practices.

The customer experience process is about creating Evangelists out of Satisfied Customers and encouraging Unsatisfied Customers to be Heretic Customers so that you can convert them to Evangelists. In simple terms, the customer experience is about exceeding expectations during critical interactions, having assertive mechanisms for obtaining customer feedback, and executing an exceptional service recovery process when you fall short of the customer's desires.

One quick note: there is a tiny, tiny, tiny number of people who could be assigned to a fifth customer group. This is populated by a demographic that my dad would call “born mean, lived mean, died mean.” The percentage of truly irrational, impossible‐to‐please people is incredibly small. If you have any, be absolutely certain you didn't create them. If you can be certain you didn't, encourage them to try your competitors.

NOT ALL CUSTOMERS ARE ALIKE

Perhaps the biggest challenge for delivering an exceptional customer experience is that the definition of service excellence varies depending on the client. Essentially, all customers want some combination of the following factors from their service provider:

• A relationship with a likeable person who genuinely cares about them
• An efficient solution to their needs that will improve their life
• A knowledgeable professional who can evaluate and recommend the right product and service
• Someone who is willing to explore options and customize their experience

While all customers want all these factors delivered by their service provider, they prioritize them in different orders. Some customers are far more forgiving of a less knowledgeable employee if that person displays a genuine, likeable demeanor. Others, however, have less interest in tolerating a charming service provider if they are inadequately trained. Many customers are far less interested in all the options than they are in a rapid resolution of their specific problem while others do want to engage in an exploration of the possibilities to select the one that most reflects their own lifestyle.

In Chapter 4, “Leadership Ideology,” I discussed the importance of intrinsic needs fulfillment and referenced four iconic interactive styles: Romantics, Warriors, Experts, and Masterminds. These styles don't just manifest in employee behaviors. They exist in our customers. Romantic customers prioritize relationships over the other three factors, Warriors want solutions, Experts want knowledge, and Masterminds want options.

High‐performing cultures invest in training that enables their service providers to quickly ascertain the way each customer prioritizes the elements of the experience. Further, these cultures evaluate their own products and services to determine what types of customers are attracted to them and why. They evaluate: What is the brand, and whom does it attract? Here's an example.

Roth Living distributes luxury domestic appliances (Sub‐Zero, Wolf, etc.) in the Midwest and Mountain states of the United States. They display these beautiful kitchen appliances in showrooms in Denver, St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City. The products are amazing, and the service is impeccable. The incredible part of their business model is that they don't sell any of these appliances. They distribute appliances to retail stores where the consumer can purchase them. So why does Roth Living have these opulent showrooms and create amazing customer experiences, even though they don't sell directly to the end user?

It's about understanding your customer and delivering an experience that is consistent with your brand. In a retail showroom, the brands that Roth Living carries will be displayed next to or near all the other brands. Sometimes they are placed in their own area within the store in an attempt to create a luxury oasis – something Sub‐Zero calls a “Living Kitchen” – within a broader showroom, but other times they are side by side with less expensive and less luxurious brands. The customer of that retail store will be working with a sales professional who is expected to know about all the brands and models that they carry. Most, if not all, will be far cheaper than the Sub‐Zero or Wolf brands. Adding to the challenge, far more customers are searching for appliances below the Sub‐Zero and Wolf price points, so retail sales professionals become more knowledgeable on the less‐expensive brands and may even develop a cognitive bias toward selling other brands because of this comfort level.

The manufacturer, and Roth Living, can and do invest in training and merchandising support for the retailer, but the ultimate control of the customer experience resides with the store. That means that a Sub‐Zero or Wolf customer will likely have exactly the same experience as a client shopping for an entry‐level appliance. The luxury market exists not just because of the level of craftmanship of the products, but also the value‐added luxury elements that surround the product. That is nearly impossible to deliver at a store that has an inventory across all price points.

Roth Living solves this problem by taking control of the customer experience. They promote their value to the sales professionals as a resource for differentiating the brand without the risk of losing the sale. If you have a customer interested in Sub‐Zero and/or Wolf appliances, send them to us, says Roth Living, and we will treat them to an experience matching this client's luxury expectations. Roth Living has essentially inserted itself into the retail transaction to ensure that their customers have a luxury experience that would be impossible for the store's showroom to deliver on. That is a peak‐performing customer experience.

It doesn't end there, either. Roth Living knows that the majority of their clients are Warriors and Masterminds. Sure, they have Romantics and Experts, too, but not as many. And we know that Masterminds like options, innovative features, and cool stuff. Roth Living's showrooms are practically a playground for adults – a Mastermind fantasy. For the Warrior, the showroom staff can save them time by quickly using resources to steer them to the exact appliance package to fit their needs – efficient, solution‐focused service, all while allowing them to experience the status that plays to their competitive natures.

Therein lies the secret to creating Evangelist customers from satisfied customers – meeting their intrinsic need. A Romantic customer is naturally loyal, provided they have worked with a likeable service provider who appreciates their patronage. Experts don't like mistakes and respond to security, so a knowledgeable service provider who can deliver what they promise will keep their business. Knowing your customer's intrinsic need and fulfilling it will convert a merely satisfied customer to the more valuable Evangelist.

THE HEART AND ART OF SERVICE EXCELLENCE

My career in corporate human resources development was greatly shaped by my experiences at Marshall Field's and Buena Vista Hospitality Group. The common thread between upscale retail and hospitality is the emphasis placed on customer service as a brand differentiator. Both companies took that competitive advantage seriously. My role at both organizations included assuring customer satisfaction by providing both employee training and organizational systems that supported this commitment to the customer experience.

Actually, I think my appreciation for the human element in business can be traced to working for my dad at Mitchell's Heating and Air Conditioning as a kid. Dale Mitchell sold HVAC and appliances and did some illegal plumbing when necessary. Greenup, Illinois, was a small town. My dad seemed to know every single person in it and could call them by name the moment they walked into his store. He knew their story, created an experience tailored to them, and managed to survive the assault of “big box” stores for several years by embodying his brand promise, “Mitchell's – Where Service Is Our Business.” I can recall many occasions on a Sunday or a holiday or in the middle of the night when our home phone would ring and off Dad went to try to fix a furnace, a refrigerator, or an oven for a panicked customer.

Among my responsibilities as a 16‐year‐old was to send past due statements to the customers who had not paid for their service call or were late on their installment for an appliance they had purchased. Some of these statements represented transactions that were years old, yet my Dad insisted I send them out. Not only that, he would continue to perform service calls or sell these customers more merchandise.

• I would ask him, “Why do you continue to provide service to these people if they don't pay their bill?”
• “Am I supposed to leave them without heat?” he would say. “They don't have a pot to piss in, so they can't afford to pay me.”
• “Then why do you bother sending them bills and late notices?” It seemed a waste of time for me to hand scribe the statement, address an envelope, put a stamp on it, and mail it out each month.
• “Well, I damn sure want them to remember how much they owe me, even if they don't pay.”

That was my dad. He was what I call a Hired Gun (a Warrior/Romantic). He also had a servant's heart.

I can't remember when I first heard the term “servant's heart” but I loved it immediately. Some people do seem to be wired to make others happy. Initially, I thought this quality was linked to Romantics exclusively, but I eventually came to realize that despite their self‐sacrificing nature, they are not always natural service providers. All interactive styles have the capacity to flourish as practitioners of service excellence. After all, customers come in all four types, so it is obvious that service providers do, too. Romantic service providers excel at building relationships, Warrior service providers efficiently solve problems, Experts know their stuff, Masterminds get creative. The key is that they have a genuine desire to make people happy. It fulfills them. That is the servant's heart – the heart of service.

A customer experience that creates Evangelists will require an employee base that exhibits a servant's heart. That alone, however, is not enough. There is an art to service as well. That is where employee training is so valuable. The heart of service excellence is best acquired through employee selection processes, but the art can be created through skills training. Teaching people how to acknowledge, greet, treat, and execute the technical aspects of the customer interaction is a necessary part of creating the desired customer experience. An employee with a servant's heart who has not received training in the art of service excellence will quickly become frustrated. It is akin to a carpenter not being given tools or an artist without the resources to create art. Service excellence requires both natural ability and good training.

SERVICE EXCELLENCE AND ORGANIZATIONAL ERGONOMICS

Operational efficiency is one of the success scoreboard metrics. So is customer satisfaction. When these two important components of organizational success misalign, they can create a detrimental customer experience. Sometimes, the process that is most efficient for the organization is not conducive to an exceptional customer experience. In the long run, organizations benefit by prioritizing customer experience over operational efficiency if all things are equal. In baseball, the tie goes to the runner. In organizational excellence, the tie goes to the customer.

I personally experienced the mistake of prioritizing efficiency over customer experience with one of my clients. Several years ago, I worked on a project with a national home builder to enhance their customer satisfaction scores. The specific division that was our focus had just finished last in a J. D. Power quality survey of national home builders. I was contracted to collect data from recent home buyers, produce recommendations on training interventions, and deliver the appropriate customer service classes.

We began the project by hosting an open house with recent home buyers to discuss their experience working with the builder. It was a sort of focus group setting without the formality. We served hors d'oeuvres, beer, and wine, and chatted about the highs and lows of the entire process. For anyone who has purchased and built a new home, you know that this whole experience is one of the wildest emotional roller coasters a consumer will experience. The excitement of designing and living in a new home is largely swept away by missed construction deadlines, repeated paperwork requests, and a general sense that nothing is happening until everything happens at once. It is exhausting. As one home builder told me, “Never has the perfect house been built.”

Aside from the complaints that were unique to each customer, a common concern emerged from our conversations. Before the customers had signed the contract, their primary service provider was the new home consultant (NHC), the real estate professional who had met them in the model home and steered the sales process from the beginning. The customers found that the NHC was responsive, helpful, and eager to be of service – until the contract was signed and the building process began. Then, responsiveness, helpfulness, and the perception of eagerness waned. It wasn't that the NHC no longer cared about the home buyers; it was that they didn't have the information to answer their questions.

The home's build was the responsibility of the construction manager, a mid‐level leader who was responsible for several ongoing homes at various stages of the construction process. When the home buyer would call the NHC, the NHC would have to track down the construction manager to get answers. Often, the construction manager would have to further research the question by contacting supervisors, subcontractors, or inspectors. By the time the NHC could get an answer – if they could get an answer – the home buyer was becoming frustrated by the perceived lack of responsiveness. In an interesting example of “behavior breeds behavior,” the employee experience was also negatively impacted by this practice. NHCs were complaining about the challenge of obtaining construction updates, and construction managers were irritated by the constant requests for updates from the NHC.

Upon presenting the results of our focus groups to the builder's executive team, we identified a solution. (Side note: the following is a perfect example of the imbalance of authority and impact discussed in the leadership ideology section. Had we spent more time polling the team members and mid‐level leaders, we could have made a much better decision.) We decided that the primary contact for the home buyer should shift from the NHC before contract to the construction manager after contract. The thought process here was that the home buyer could receive a quicker, more thorough update from the construction manager and the NHC could focus on driving sales rather than chasing information down for contracted deals. To support the construction managers as they took on direct customer contact, we would put them through a four‐part service excellence training program to enhance their customer service skills.

From an operational efficiency standpoint, it made perfect sense. From a customer experience perspective, it seemed to resolve the biggest complaint of home buyers. It even looked good from an employee development angle – enhanced skills for construction managers, more focus on sales for the NHCs, who were compensated based on sold homes. I remember feeling pretty damn good about that meeting.

There was only one problem. Construction managers are not candidates for a servant's heart. Now, don't get me wrong; there are exceptions. However, a construction manager is primarily responsible for getting a home built on time and with quality. This requires overseeing contractors who pour concrete, install plumbing, do electrical work, put up dry wall, paint, landscape, and the like. They are challenged to meet deadlines by holding people accountable, many of whom do not work for them, have other clients, are dealing with their own employee challenges, and so on. In other words, there are a lot of moving parts to building just one home. Construction managers are overseeing many home builds. As a result, tact, diplomacy, and patience become less important than demands, threats, and coercion when it comes to getting results. It's not that construction managers are mean; it's just that their interactions with contractors are, um, more spirited than one would desire with a customer.

After the second seminar, it became clear to me that – while eager and willing – this group was just not the right contact point for a home buyer. It was unreasonable to expect the construction manager to seamlessly transition from holding the electrician responsible for a deadline, sending a drywaller home because he smelled like alcohol, negotiating with a home inspector, and then dealing with a nervous home buyer. The behavior breeds behavior tenet was not working in their favor. Add to this situation that the home buyer did not want to change contact people when they'd already built a relationship with the NHC. We had missed the mark by erring on the side of efficiency instead of customer experience.

While not as efficient, the better solution was far more beneficial for the customer experience. Instead of training the construction managers to do something that was not part of their core competency, we designed a system in which the construction managers met with the NHCs each week to update them on the progress of each home. This allowed the NHCs to proactively update the home buyer. If the home buyer had questions that the NHC couldn't answer, they would inform the home buyer that they would get the answer at the next meeting with the construction manager. Home buyers came to expect that the NHC would have updates once a week – a time frame that they felt was reasonable. NHCs could schedule calls with their home buyer around the meetings with construction managers. Construction managers knew they would have one meeting a week with NHCs, rather than receiving several calls about individual homes each day.

This solution was a homerun. Home buyers were more satisfied with the understanding that they would receive weekly updates; NHCs were more comfortable receiving weekly updates and proactively calling home buyers; and construction managers were happier limiting interactions with NHCs to one weekly meeting rather than several daily calls. For what it's worth, the construction managers also enjoyed the training on service excellence but were relieved not to have the responsibility of being the primary contact for home buyers. The construction managers who did have a servant's heart were able to contribute to the home buyers' experience directly if needed. Those who didn't have this orientation could stay out of the picture.

SERVICE RECOVERY

One of the most overlooked aspects of the art of service excellence is handling the Unsatisfied or Heretic Customer. It can be uncomfortable for an organization to admit that they will occasionally fall short of their customers' expectations, but the reality is that it is inevitable. Rather than avoid this unattractive truth, peak performing cultures embrace it. Remember, Heretic Customers – when properly handled – often become Evangelists.

The good news is that service recovery is about as simple as a process can be, especially one that is so critical to the customer experience. Unlike the complexities of interactive style, intrinsic need fulfillment, journey mapping, filtering, and so on, service recovery does have a nice, clean, one‐size‐fits‐all approach. It is so straightforward it even has a fitting acronym: the LAST model.

• Listen: Let the customer share their entire complaint. This is important. Do not interrupt, even if you know exactly what to do just five seconds into their rant. It is critical for the customer to express all of their frustration. They will often begin to lose their hostility – even become somewhat apologetic for their emotional state – by the end of their diatribe. This step is about two things: understanding the nature of the customer's concern and allowing them to vent their emotional response. If you fail to accomplish either, you will not effectively recover.
• Apologize: This can be hard, especially if you do not feel the organization is at fault or you do not appreciate the way the customer has engaged. However, the apology is not an admission of culpability so much as the regret that the customer feels the way they do, regardless of blame. When a service provider says, “I am so sorry you are having this experience,” it diffuses the remaining anger and establishes an alliance between the employee and the customer. The key to service recovery is to realign with the customer rather than maintain what has evolved into an adversarial relationship. Once the customer views us as an ally, we will no longer be the object of their scorn.
• Solve: This is critical. A customer is only a customer if we are providing them with a product or service of value. For this reason, I encourage my clients to adopt a policy of “Never say no.” If we cannot solve their problem, we have no value. A hard no to a client will either end the relationship or force them to explore other avenues to get value, like asking to speak to the manager. On those rare occasions that we have decided to part ways with a customer – those people who were born mean, lived mean, died mean – only a person with ultimate authority should be involved. Service providers should always be providing service.

  Now, “Never say no” is not the same thing as “Always say yes.” It is important that service providers are allowed (and trained on) a broad latitude of options for resolving a customer's dissatisfaction. I find it best if customers are given choices as to how they would like their concern resolved. This gives the power back to the consumer and allows for a satisfactory reconciliation within the parameters of the organization's practices. Bottom line on customer complaints: if the customer wants something that we can provide, give it to them. If we can't provide what they ask for, offer them three options that you can.

• Thank: If you thought apologizing to a dissatisfied client was tough, imagine how hard thanking them will be. This is the step that is most often omitted and yet it is essential to creating Evangelists. Remember, most Unsatisfied Customers leave us without telling us. Yet many do tell other people through social media posts, word of mouth, and the myriad other ways we can express ourselves today. When a customer shares their criticism of us to us, that is incredibly useful. Not only does it allow us to win them back, but it provides important feedback about our operation – hence, why Heretics are so valuable.

Training your entire organization on the LAST model of service recovery and all the other procedural elements of customer service will create a peak performance culture based on both the heart and the art of service excellence.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING AND THE POWER OF EXPECTATIONS

Beyond the interactive style and intrinsic needs considerations of the client is the notion of understanding customer expectations. We often evaluate whether we've met, exceeded, or fell short of customer expectations using broad measures. Customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores, and online reviews are typical metrics that organizations use to gauge the effectiveness of the customer experience. However, customers do not assess their interaction with the organization as one big experience. Rather, a customer's opinion of your organization is formed over time based on a series of critical interactions with the operation and employees. Understanding a couple of key terms and their importance to the customer experience is necessary.

The Need for a CAB and CAC

A key to the effectiveness of both Client Advisory Boards and Client Awareness Councils is to develop a reporting structure that reaches the highest levels of the organization. Minimally, the organization should assign the responsibility of the customer experience to a C‐suite‐level executive. Optimally, this position should be exclusively responsible for customer centricity. A happy medium is expanding the highest sales executive's role to include the customer experience. In the Piramal Pharma Solutions example, Stu Needleman serves as the Chief Commercial Officer (sales) and Chief Patient Centricity Officer (customer experience). Having a voice at the executive board level helps ensure that the work of CABs and CACs is more than just lip service and provides meaningful organizational direction.

You will find examples of the PAC charter and welcome letter for your reference at the end of this chapter. These documents were created with the input of Paul Delfino. Delfino Marketing Communications, the Leadership Difference, Inc., and Piramal Pharma Solutions working together on this initiative.

The value of having both a CAB and CAC is that the two entities provide distinctly different perspectives operationally. The CAB views the operation from the outside in, while the CAC sees it from inside out. Creating the best possible customer experience in a manner that is cost effective, consistent, and sustainable will require that these two perspectives are balanced. Not lost in all this is that the customer experience is most often about people serving people. Remember, as discussed in Chapter 2, “Horizontal Alignment,” behavior breeds behavior – the origin of that phrase will be explained in our next chapter. Ultimately, the customer experience will be indelibly influenced by the employee who is delivering the service. That employee's behavior will be influenced by the way the organization treats them. So, the employee experience impacts the customer experience. Unfortunately, most organizations don't treat the two anywhere near the same.

Sample of Piramal Pharma Solutions Charter

Patient Awareness Council Charter, December 9, 2019, v1.0

The Mission of the Patient Awareness Council

At Piramal Pharma Solutions, everything we do, we do for the patient. Patients are the common purpose that we at Piramal Pharma Solutions share with our customers. To be the best possible partner for our customers, it is vital that we embrace patient centricity as our mindset and culture. It's much more than a marketing slogan – it's why we do what we do.

Patient centricity aligns with Piramal's core values:

• Knowledge: a deeper understanding of patients' needs and concerns
• Action: for the good of others
• Care: concern for the personal side of drug development
• Impact: operational improvements, improved quality

In order to ensure that the strategy of patient centricity is embraced across the organization, we are establishing volunteer Patient Awareness Councils at each Piramal Pharma Solutions site around the world. At their core, the councils serve an important mission: to drive advocacy and awareness of patient centricity and to suggest operational changes that can bring this initiative to life.

Council Structure

Each Piramal Pharma Solutions site will have its own council comprised of 8–12 site employees who represent a wide breadth of interactive styles and job responsibilities. Candidates who choose to volunteer to serve on their site's council should demonstrate the following qualities:

• Respected and influential among peers
• A natural leader, but not necessarily in a leadership role in the organization
• Confident and comfortable with engaging in critical thinking related to company processes
• Strong communication skills
• Currently display a patient‐centric mentality
• Understand and exhibit Piramal Pharma Solutions core values of knowledge, action, care, and impact
• Demonstrate reliability
• Enthusiastic about the opportunity to serve on the council

Council Responsibilities

Council members will be expected to be the voice of patient centricity at their site, with specific functional responsibilities that include:

• Manifest the momentum for change.
• Increase awareness among staff of how our work impacts a patient, including information about the products made and their importance to patients.
• Promote best practices for a patient‐centric operation.
• Address the specific challenges that exist at each site relative to patient centricity.
• Identify opportunities to improve operational practices to enhance patient centricity.
• Document operational enhancements that improve patient centricity.
• Report operational enhancements to the executive level.
• Provide regular updates on activity to the site head, including recommended actions.
• Report on metrics as defined by the Chief Patient Centricity Officer (these may include customer satisfaction, customer retention, Net Promoter Score, operational improvements, fiscal performance, etc.).

Selection Process and Leadership

Participation as a council member is voluntary. Each site's council should have no fewer than 8 members and no more than 12, established via this process:

• Each site head will nominate a chairperson for their site's council.
• The chairperson will solicit volunteers from across the site.
• The chairperson, site head, and a representative of HR will evaluate candidates against the criteria shown above and select from the volunteers.
• If there are not enough volunteers, or if some key functional areas are not represented, the chairperson, site head, and HR rep may target specific individuals and ask for their participation.
• A vice chairperson, who will serve as chair in the absence of the chairperson, will be elected by vote at the council kickoff meeting for each site.

Council Meeting Protocols

Council members will be daily advocates of the patient while demonstrating PPS's core values.

• Once established, each council will be provided with guidelines and expectations for their kickoff meeting by the Chief Patient Centricity Officer.
• To ensure that the councils work as an autonomous group, neither the site head nor the Chief Patient Centricity Officer will participate in council meetings.
• The chairperson will be responsible for running each meeting. If unable to participate, the vice chair will assume that responsibility.
• The council chairperson will be responsible for organizing regular meetings of his or her council – no less than once per month – to accomplish the following:
  • Create awareness of the patient perspective for each project.
  • Ensure operational systems and processes recognize the impact they have on the well‐being of the patient.
  • Continually promote intended results for improving and saving lives.
  • Stress the importance of meeting customer expectations for project delivery.
  • Display the commitment to making a difference in the people waiting for our work.
• Council feedback, including recommendations on actions, must be presented to the site head and Chief Patient Centricity Officer following each meeting via an in‐person meeting, email summary, or teleconference briefing.
• Periodically, all the councils will meet either face to face or by phone to share best practices, discuss their activities, and deliberate on operational improvements. There will also be opportunities to present specific developments and projects to the PPS executive committee.

Training

After the councils have been populated, members will receive training on the following skills to enhance their ability to succeed:

• Overview of organizational development principles
• The purpose of the patient centricity strategy
• The role of the Patient Awareness Council in the patient centricity strategy
• Discussion of the metrics of success for patient centricity strategy
• Election of a site council chairperson, vice chairperson, and outline of reporting structure to site director and Chief Patient Centricity Officer.

Council Expectations

Council members are expected to abide by these terms:

• Membership on the council is for a minimum term of one year and a maximum term of three years.
• Additional term(s) may be added at the discretion of the site head, Chief Patient Centricity Officer, and HR representative.
• Council members should attend and participate in all council meetings. If unable to attend a meeting due to schedule conflicts, business travel, holiday, or other reason, the council member should notify the chairperson in advance of the meeting.
• If/when the chairperson is unable to attend a meeting, the vice chairperson will assume responsibility for management of that meeting.
• Any council member who misses an excessive number of meetings or otherwise does not contribute to the objectives of the council may be asked to resign from the council at the discretion of the chairperson, site head, and/or HR representative.

Questions? Suggestions? Comments?

Contact Stu Needleman, Chief Patient Centricity Officer, at [email protected]

Example of Patient Awareness Council Welcome Letter

Dear [name]

Welcome to the Piramal Pharma Solutions [site name] Patient Awareness Council!

The success of the Patient Awareness Council is extremely important to the company, so your participation on the council should be viewed as both an honor and a privilege. It comes with a mission: to drive advocacy and awareness of patient centricity at your site and all PPS sites around the world, and to suggest operational changes that can bring patient centricity to life.

As a Patient Awareness Council member, you will be expected to be the voice of patient centricity at your site. This means increasing awareness of how our work impacts patients; identifying and promoting best practices; addressing the challenges that exist at each site head‐on; and more. Most importantly, it means being an agent for change wherever and whenever the existing culture and site operations are not patient centric.

More information about the specifics of the council – including roles and responsibilities, council structure, meeting protocols, and more – can be found in the Patient Awareness Council Charter document, which you should have already received. Please read it carefully and feel free to address any questions directly with me.

The next step for council members is onboarding and training. In my role as Chief Patient Centricity Officer for the company, I will be working with Dave Mitchell to facilitate training that will provide the council with the information and tools required to make it an effective resource. The training session for your site is scheduled for [insert actual day/time/venue here]. A representative of the site leadership team will be sending out a calendar invitation for the training; please let them know ASAP if you will be unable to attend.

Following the training, the council meetings will begin in earnest. During the initial meeting, council members will be tasked with electing a vice chairman, who will serve as chair in the absence of the chairperson. Each council meeting should also have a member designated to capture notes and action items.

Once again, congratulations on your participation and welcome. I sincerely appreciate your decision to join me on the journey to bring patient centricity to Piramal Pharma Solutions.

Stu Needleman

CPCO and CCO

Key Considerations

• Allot substantial time and resources to create a detailed customer journey map complete with each branch the customer can potentially travel.
• For each critical interaction in the customer journey, identify the neutral experience.
• Identify opportunities to cost effectively enhance critical interactions, paying particular attention to those that occur early in the experience.
• How we recover from a poor customer experience is just as important to our success as our ability to deliver service excellence the first time. All service providers should be trained on service recovery.
• What customers of our organization should populate our Client Advisory Board?
• What criteria should we use to select members for our Client Advocacy Council?
• How will the work of the CAB and CAC inform decisions at the executive level?
• Consider who should provide “executive sponsorship,” giving particular consideration to someone who is willing to passionately promote the customer's perspective at the highest levels of the organization.