CXChronicles Podcast 171 with Alister Esam, CEO & Founder at Process Bliss

Hey CX Nation,

In this week's episode of The CXChronicles Podcast #171 we welcomed Alister Esam, CEO & Founder at Process Bliss based in Newbury, England.

Process Bliss helps their customers embed process  in their business to help it run like clockwork. Process Bliss helps optimize your company by identifying blockers, pinpointing the key processes, improving them on a regular basis + working with your team so they are apart of the process.   

Ultimately, people are smarter than process, which is why Process Bliss not only manages your recurring processes, it shows you where process is failing your people, and empowers them to complete it in the best way they know how.

In this episode of CXCP, Alister and Adrian chat through how he has tackled The Four CX Pillars: Team,  Tools, Process & Feedback throughout his career + shares some of the tips & tricks that have worked across his customer focused business leader journey.

**Episode #171 Highlight Reel:**

1. Why process is typically dealt with as a "dirty word" in many companies
2.  Inviting your very best customers into the scaling & optimization process
3.  Understanding your core roles + areas of accountability & authority
4.  Why process helps to drive all The Four CX Pillars
5.  How your business will gravitate towards the focus areas that you measure 

Huge thanks to Alister for coming on The CXChronicles Podcast and featuring his team's work and efforts in pushing the customer experience and customer success space into the future.

Click here to learn more about Alister Esam

Click here to learn more about Process Bliss

If you enjoy The CXChronicles Podcast, please stop by your favorite podcast player and leave us a review. This is the easiest way that we can find new listeners, guests and future customer focused business leaders to tune into our weekly podcast. 

And be sure to grab a copy of our book "The Four CX Pillars To Grow Your Business Now" on Amazon +  check out the CXChronicles Youtube channel with all of our video episodes & customer focused business leader content!

Reach out to CXC at INFO@cxchronicles.com for more information about how we can help your business make customer happiness a habit!

Transcript

#171 Alister Esam, CEO & Founder @ Process Bliss

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:00:02) - All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the CXChronicles podcast. Super excited for today's show. As we are welcoming Alister Esam. Allister, say hello to the CX nation, my friend. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:00:14) - Hello. Hello. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:00:16) - So, so we're pumped to have you on Alister taste can be a fun chat. Um, guys, Alister just had a really, uh, interesting background and journey. He's done a ton of different things with a bunch of different companies, all always focused on the customer, always focused on the team that serving the customer. So I'm excited for him to, to, to join us and share his, his story. I'll share. Why don't you, why don't you kick us off my friends, spend a few minutes just sort of setting the stage for, for all of us. Um, how'd you get into the world that you're in. How did you get into this, this, this space and how did you kind of start off your own customer focused business leader journey? 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:00:52) - So I was, um, I trained as an actuary, uh, when I, when I left the university and I did that for a few years. Um, couldn't wait to get out of it, uh, most dope profession. Um, 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:01:04) - And I, I it's quite, it's quite something, not many people trained as an actuary and then escaped to do something else. It tends to catch you for life and until you retire. So, so no, I, I did that till I was about, um, uh, 30, which I consider to be a little bit of a waste of my life, but it was probably a useful, useful experience. Um, and then, uh, I, uh, left there and I ran another business for a little while, um, with a guy who, uh, really, uh, wasn't great. And I learned how not to run a business. So that sort, that took another two years of my life. And then eventually, I, I kind of set up a software as a service business, although we didn't call it that back then, uh, called, um, protocol board packs. And it was, uh, electronic wallpapers for board meetings. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:01:47) - This is like 2000 and 2003 and software as a service. Wasn't a thing. Um, and it wasn't easy to get funding. So I beat structure, uh, built that business, um, from a customer service point of view, uh, you know, we had very big structure. We had very little money to spend on the product. So, um, what we could do is invest time in our clients. And I think that's an interesting thing to startups is that, you know, your, your, your focus is people will forgive a lot about your products if they're looked after cared for and made. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:02:17) - So, yeah, so I run that business, uh, gradually built it over the years. Um, 2007, 2008 people started banding the phrase software as a service around, and I thought, Hey, that's what we do. Um, yeah. Um, I just thought it was my dad rents farm buildings out. Um, he's he was a farmer. Uh, I, I thought it was cool that you could rent software. There's no limit, he's got a limit on the number of buildings, getting him runs out. I had no limit, I could just keep replicating this software. It runs again. So I just thought was a cool business model. Um, so yeah, that's, um, got, got to a point where I was about 70 odd people and, um, and decided to exit it was getting a bit bored. Uh, sorry. I exited that. Um, and, uh, that kind of sat me up. So since then, one of the things we did in that business was we were very process focused. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:03:07) - I'm sure you'll come into it. And we developed a product, uh, to help us manage all our processes, which wasn't controlling. It was kind of empowering. And, um, and off the back of that, I decided I was going to take this product has done wonders for me and the whole kind of ethos behind it. I decided to take that to market. So that's what we've been doing last few years. Uh, I've written a book called the dirty word, uh, which, uh, which kind of supports that and backs up and explains the kind of ethos and why it's called the dirty word, because process is treated like a dirty word. People get it wrong. So, yeah, does that, and I am currently an investor in about 20 different, um, typically SAS startups, but not all SAS. Um, and, uh, they're all, most of those are do very, very well. So, yeah. Um, so that's, yeah, 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:03:55) - That's super cool. So first of all, um, I think, uh, you know, it's just, it's, it's always awesome to hear the different steps and the different paths that people come across in their journeys. I want to go back to, um, the company that you built and, and, and just before we even dive into some of the things that you're doing with process buzz today, but that must have been an incredible experience. Number one, you spent, uh, you know, uh, a big period of your life building that. Number two, you mentioned set up to 70 teammates, successful exit that must have really kind of given you a sense for, um, just number one, how you mentioned focusing on customers, and you mentioned that one of your biggest competitive advantages, or one of your biggest things that you could do early on when you're a startup. A lot of the folks who are listening to this show, they're working on startups, they're building startups, or they're at some of these rocket ship companies that are already kind of crushing it, and they're on their way to becoming the next public company. But for you, I love that you talked about the focus, the customer side there as a, as a, as a competitive advantage. Um,

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:04:53) - Uh, how, what was some of the ways that you guys early on specifically before you guys got big house, or what was some of the ways that you guys would do that customer focus? Was it just general customer meetings, regular working sessions, regular engagement. Was there other little tips and tricks that you found that worked really, really well or maybe unique things that you guys were doing to make sure that, that your early customers knew how maniacal you guys were about, about helping to build your product and build your, your, your customer success offering for them? 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:05:20) - I think, I think, um, I think when you're, when you're a school starter you, um, the, the key thing, and I think it's true to see you understand where your product market fit is. The key thing is to get yourself involved in the businesses you're dealing with, as much as possible, you don't worry about the amount of money you're making or losing or whatever whatever's happening. You've just got to, if a, if a, if a client, even now in our current business, if a client will let us sit in their offices and work with them and see how they work and spend time with them. And we just love to do that and travel to do that. And we just enjoy doing that. Um, and that's important for two reasons. One is because you build a relationship, which gets you over the hump. And I mean, the experience, I mean, where I'm at right now with the process of this business is fascinating because we're doing all that. And we know it's the right thing to do. And the customers that we have are loving what we're doing, they're making great case studies, they're spreading word of mouth. They're telling consultants about us that gain. So it's, that's, that's gonna, that's gonna kind of, that's free marketing, free sales that just 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:06:14) - Expanded totally 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:06:14) - New. So getting in and building those relationships is, is, is actually key. But by doing it as well, you also understand what their needs are. So you ended up developing the product more. But the thing that I find amazing, and I think it's interesting for your audience is it's so easy to, uh, Excel at customer service. I mean, I'm in a SAS world. And so many people don't look after their customers. I mean, I had a, we had one of our clients the other day, we were doing a case study with them and I said, why did you choose process person? I was hoping it was because of our great feature here, our great feature here. And 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:06:45) - They said, 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:06:46) - We looked at your main competitor. And, um, you know, I basically couldn't get, I couldn't get a call with them. I couldn't, I couldn't get hold of them. They didn't call me back. They didn't. She said, if they ain't look after me, like if they don't, if they look after me like that during the sales process, what's he going to be like, I'm on board. And it's just amazing how I think, I don't know. It seems like certain people get to a certain size where it's really hard for them to, it may have been there maybe two of your four pillars that they start to put in place process, and they kill all the, they kill all the personal interaction because people become machines that are just kind of daily with them and they, you know, they, and then people become de-motivated. And so that creates experience. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:07:23) - So, you know, for me, that was all about what was nice was we kept that going as well. So we did that early on and as the business grew right until the end, when I sold it on the end, but when I sold it, they, the P there was this culture of just looking after the clients and, you know, so, so give you an example on that. Um, once we got to, you know, to, to being successful and still rolling out, you know, we, we would have a client come on board and they would want us to go out to the north of England five times to meet them. And we'd be like, you know, a lot of people would say, well, it's just not worth it for the amount of money logically, that made no sense, but we just, we would do that. If that's what they wanted to become a happy customer, then we wouldn't lose money on the client because we'll make money on clients elsewhere is fine. But I think too many people, the FDA gets involved and starts saying, we shouldn't be doing this anymore. But the thing about that is these clients are going to bring me more clients 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:08:16) - And my best Salesforce, you know What these guys did. I don't know how to make any money, but they look after you. And that really matters. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:08:24) - Yeah, it does. It really does. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:08:28) - I think it was, it was nice. I don't think we did it intentionally, but I think the point was making was that kind of early, kind of early push on customer service, which we knew was important transformed into a culture, which maintained its way through. And we never let anyone break that by coming in, just pointing at the numbers. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:08:46) - Yeah, yeah. Outside. I love that piece of advice right out of the gates here, man, because you're right, when you are mature and you figured everything out as a business and you're 10 years down the line and everything's kind of been sorted out and you've got a huge portfolio and you've got, there's a lot more, um, leniency because financially you're S you're in a, you're in a safer or more comfortable spot. Find, start, start picking some of this stuff up and start looking at the numbers and start getting really good about your resource allocation management and get very mathematical about like what type of reason. Okay, fine. But when you're building these businesses and you're trying to figure out how the hell to create a solution, a product, a service for a market that maybe still needs even a little bit of help understanding why the need is so imperative or why, like you gotta be, you gotta have some extra help in this, at that point of the business. I love that. You're saying this, you gotta be flexible. You gotta be pliable. You gotta be almost like wide open to where any new customer could potentially bring your business into a completely different field. Right? Like, uh, and again, you gotta do this within reason. You can't have people pulling you into completely different industries or complete maybe, actually, maybe you can. There's a lot of examples where companies have started off thinking that they were going to go down one path and then they, they made the pivot due to customer suggestion, customer demand, customer feedback,

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:10:01) - And then all of a sudden they created, you know, completely wildly different successful companies, but you're right. I love that piece of relationship, the listening and the constant attention. I think that's huge now. So I'd love to jump into the, the, the, the first, um, six pillar of team. And we're already kind of getting into this, but spend some time talking about, um, your team at process bliss. And then I'd love for you just to spend a few minutes talking about you've worked at all these different companies. You built several companies you're invested in companies. I'd love to just kind of hear you kind of think about what some of the, the, the most core focus areas that you've seen. Incredible business leaders really focused on it's driven success for their business, and really kind of pushed the companies into the future. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:10:37) - So the core focus of the last 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:10:41) - Really just, just, just give us, give us a sense for some of the things that you've seen along your journey that have, have been paramount, uh, focus areas for building teams and really kind of growing and scaling and, and helping to support a team. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:10:55) - Yeah. So, so my team, a process versus really small it's about 10 people. So we're, we're, we're, we're back to startup phase. So I sometimes regret my decision to, to kind of give up my larger team, which always was growing at sort of 50, because 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:11:10) - I was a bit bored. So I, the neighbor regrets, it wasn't a bad thing. So, um, no, we, we, we started getting quite small. So customer service for us is, uh, it's, it's kind of like, it's, it's, it's one, one sort of, well, we're all, we're all customer service, right. Um, you know, w we're we're all, we're all looking after the customers and they're there, but there is a key person that kind of drives that. So, um, that, that's where we're at right now grow your team. I think it's the point we were on earlier about culture and about setting the right. I mean, I, I look at things that we did, culture's difficult, you know, because I don't think you can identity. You can choose a culture. It's what you've got to kind of believe it and live it and be it. Um, so all the little things that we did for our customers, as we grew our team impacted on our, um, impacted on our culture, even if we weren't doing them from a culture point of view. So for example, I mentioned my first business and these early clients, we looked after what, what that morphed into, because as we got bigger, they got settled down. They didn't need to talk us to us. So we organized, we've got, we've got a horse racing circuit race course in Newberry. So I used to book a box once a year, ended up being three boxes. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:12:21) - And I used to invite all these customers to come along. And in the end, we ended up inviting all the customers, who we had a relationship with 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:12:30) - Thousands, right? So anybody who was, but, um, it was really the ones that nobody, all the recent ones didn't really come and attend because they, they didn't, they, we didn't have quite the same relationship as we grew, but the early ones were still coming. The customers were still coming and I'd have people there who were a customer and then left the company 10 years earlier, but they'd still come along to the race state. And that's cool. That kind of stuff that we, we did it because we wanted to do it. But I think it's surprising how that impacts on culture, because a, all your team get to sit and mingle with the clients for a bit and understand, but also they kind of see that your, your, your, you really care about these clients. You really looking after them, you, you haven't forgotten, you're already clients. You've gotten off the ground that are now meaningless in financial terms to you, but they really map the business. Never forget those. And, and, and I think that culture drives its way through your whole business, as well as, as well as just, um, in terms of terms of building own teams everywhere. So, I mean, I think it's all, it's interesting. There were loads of things like that I can think of, but, um, but it it's really about naturally developing a culture where people just care about the clients. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:13:36) - Um, 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:13:38) - And I think what kills that sometimes and what the biggest mistake people make is what we touched on it earlier is when people put process in place and they put it in place in such a way. Cause you know, you're, you have fault fillers. When you look at team versus process, there's a massive conflict there between those two things. And when people will process in place, all of a sudden, you know, the ability for me to look after that customer and do a good deed, gets taken away from me. If this isn't the person I know I'm gonna have a remit to be, to be myself and to treat the customer how I see fit and move on. We're empowered, it's all stolen away from me. And so that means that I kind of get the map that kind of drives me to get the motivated, but it also means that we can't nuance things for the customers like we used to. And I think there's a, there's a, there's a key there to kind of putting process in place in such a way that you don't mess that up. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:14:27) - Yeah. I think that's very well said, sir. Um, it's, it's, you know, especially in these early early phases of growing a business, right? So almost process can be, um, a slippery slope, especially as it relates to team where it's, um, over-engineering process early, over-engineering some of the more methodical or the more, uh, cut and dry items that have to go into the day-to-day management of your customer set. It could stifle a team that's growing. It could stifle a team that theoretically every new customer, every new customer relationship is creating all these new opportunities. And then it's also it just, and I, I mean, you were talking about this the other day. I was sort of like also each customer brings a whole new set of learnings and findings. So then every new customer you're like, wait a minute, you learned those two or three brand new things that make you think of, and then you bring that to the next 10 customers. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:15:12) - And there's almost like a compounded interest, which is the, one of the cool parts about building a business. It's literally like, as you keep growing out your customer base, you're compounding that knowledge, compounding some of the things that are, um, really kind of setting them apart and you're baking it into the, into the next, you know, customer's experience, which is, uh, is, is incredible. Um, on the team side, um, 1, 1, 1 followup question before moving to tools, um, if there's been like, I guess one or two things that you've done with all the different teams that you've led and all the different teams that you've, you've, you've helped to consult and advise, won't be like the one or two things you want today's listeners kind of thinking about that they should remain hyper-focused on when it comes to just their general team leadership, for example, is it, has there been certain meetings that have always worked for you? Is it certain one-on-ones? Is it, is it just like you mentioned the, the, the community, you mentioned the horse races and getting, uh, like, um, more of a social, right. So that teams can actually build bonds, but would it be like one or two things that you'd want the listener to kind of take back to their team tomorrow? 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:16:14) - Couple of things, I suppose, I suppose one thing as an, as a suggestion, I think people are starting to do this. Now. I find, um, the way that people appraise, can we use the word appraisals, I hate the way People communicate with their teams and, and provide feedback and, and, and, and look after their development. I find it, I find so many companies that do that once a year, and I think that's just, it's laughable, It's nuts if your people you're working for that 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:16:40) - Work 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:16:41) - To have that discussion once a year. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:16:44) - And, 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:16:45) - And I, and I, and I think maybe did, maybe it's difficult in a startup when you're small and I'm probably that that's a hard thing. And also when you're small as a startup, I think people are a little bit more, a bit more grown up if you like, they, they, they're kind of, they're kind of in it with you, you're all in the same together. But when you get to a certain point, when you start doing these things, I think, um, are there anything that needs to be a monthly, uh, it needs to be monthly and it doesn't have the thing is as well. I think people would put off that because appraisals can take so long. And I, I think that, um, uh, personally, I think they don't need to use the cafe and a half an hour, but you make sure that there's a, there's a standard agenda and you go through it every, every month and, you know, you discuss, you know, how, how's it going from your point of view? How's it going from my point of view and you know, what, what do we need to do for you going forward and, and agree smack comes, and it's literally half an hour every month. And then you're, then you're kind of not doing this once a year thing, which is often the pay reviews, which is ridiculous as well. It's very unfair that, you know, you get, you, you get a great, 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:17:42) - I love that. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:17:48) - Yeah. The other thing I would say, which is versus specific, the other thing I'd say, which is more cultural is, um, I think you needs to build a culture of, of empowerment. Um, and we kind of touched on it already, but you you've got, however, how would the business, your however, big your businesses, you've got all these brains in your business and they've all, they're all bringing something to the party. They've all done ways burns are brilliant in their different ways. And you've got to harness that to develop the most you can from your business. And the way to do that is to make sure that they, they can kind of, they're empowered to make decisions and to do things. I always think there's, there's a book called the art of action. I can't remember the author, um, but it's quite a hefty book, but he talks about the way that arm is transformed over the years. And our MIS used to be, um, you know, the guy at the top used to plan the battle. Now this, these people are going to come in from this direction. You know, the cover is going to come in from this direction and it was a plan and it would never go to plan because battles don't work like that. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:18:47) - What you said, what the book sort of explains is that over the years, people started to, to kind of refine that to the point where actually what you do is give them the simplest possible mission and it's up to them, how they achieve it and they, and if they get it wrong, when they S they screw up and they, they make a mistake, then you, you reward that as opposed to punish it. Uh, because at least they use their initiative. At least they use their brain to do a good job. I think it's like that with your team. And I, they, they will let them make mistakes. Don't they? Yeah. If they, if they do something, it's, it's fine because that was their idea. They need to be empowered to do that. And I think then you will get so many more brains working in your business and motivated. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:19:25) - Yeah, totally. Yep. Yep. And I guess, and remember also what you're saying right now, we're seeing it in probably a historic, uh, uh, numbers with the global talent migration that's happening. So great point, which is like smart. People want to go work with other smart people. They want to be empowered. They want to know what their areas of accountability, responsibility and authority are. And then they want to go build and play and build a collaborate. And, and you're right. And we're seeing this right now, man, because the world is watching a lot of A-players moving from one company to another company and there, and that's all of the things that you mentioned. That's what they're insert.

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:20:00) - Um, Alistair, I'd love to pick your brain on, um, the six pillar tools, right. Um, spend a couple of minutes, just kind of talking about how you and your teams, and certainly how has the process was team? How do you guys kind of manage, um, just working with different customers, tool kits, working with your own toolkits. We just talked through the whole, the whole swab of the team side. I'd love to kind of just hear you spend a couple minutes talking about what you've learned along your journey with tools and how you can really kind of optimize and leverage them appropriately to build your business or to help scale your business. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:20:34) - Um, yeah. I, um, when you say tools, what are you, what are you sort of, 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:20:39) - So realistically, so like, so with, with many of the folks that are coming on the show, they're talking about maybe the different types of CRMs or the different types of issue resolution management systems or their ticketing systems, obviously there's, there's like a, just a laundry list of different communications tools for how people are kind of communicating with their customers. And this is my, this is kind of one of the things I love about this part of every one of these shows is like, there's so many tools that one could argue part of why so many companies in so many organizations have many of the dysfunctions is toolkits are managed appropriately in tool utilization is something that only really mature companies think about that. And then lastly, there's too many companies out there that don't have their internal tools talking to each other so that people can really kind of see the big picture, the whole view of what's going on with their customers and with their team. So, so I just kind of love to hear some of the things that you've, you've seen along your journey with how, how companies have really kind of done an, a dynamite job of managing and leveraging their toolkits. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:21:42) - Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, for me, that's another place that process bliss fits in, in our business and that, so we have like, like most businesses, we have 10 times as many tools as 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:21:57) - Intercom. You've got CRM systems, you've got, you've got little things for, so we can, we can monitor you, you ex experience with people in the product, we've got the software products, just all over the place and it's quite astonishing. A lot of them are free, which is fantastic. And it's difficult as you say, to connect them all together, they kind of, because they're all brilliant and they're all developed for specific purposes. They kind of work well in isolation, but it's difficult sometimes to connect them all together. So, and this was true in, in the larger business ballparks that, that I used to run each it was called. But, um, in that they, you know, you, you'd got kind of systems with huge amounts of data in and they didn't, they, you could, you could invest in getting them to talk together, but a lot of the time that was kind of very difficult to do. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:22:42) - So you had to kind of accept that they were, they were a little isolated silos. Um, one of the things we did, which is where process post fits in really was it, it kind of performed a glue that kind of organized things together. So if you imagine something like customer onboarding, um, onboarding, you know, you, you, you've probably got some sorts of recruitment tools you might've linked in, in there for doing stuff like that. You've got me may have spreadsheets in there for, for kind of how you look at your candidates. You've got all the CVS in a Google drive folder. You've got, um, you've got kind of, uh, I know what happens when they come on board, we need to go to zero to set up the payroll. Uh, we we've got our appraisal system, we've got our HR systems, you know, and it goes on and on and on. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:23:23) - So if you look at something like, sorry, I think about employee onboarding. If you got something like employee onboarding and employee coming on board like that, um, you've got, you've got hundreds of tools. If you actually look at the process, the process can form the glue them together. Cause the process says, you know, when, when you recruit someone, first of all, do this, when they come on board, do this and do this in this system when they did. And it kind of, it kind of kind of defines how they should all fit together and how we communicate. And it's the same with customer onboarding. If you look at customer onboarding, uh, you know, you've got, you've got tools to sign your contracts, you've got your CRM tools, you've got your fresh desk or your, whatever you're using is and best for you for your support. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:23:59) - You've got Intercom, you've got all these different things that need to be connected together and, and data needs to be transferred between them and the customer needs to flow through them. And again, again, you've got invoicing, financial systems and the process can glue together, all of those kinds of things and make it seamless and make it work for the client. And the process can also kind of connect back if you like. So, um, you know, if there's, if there's, um, often what annoys a client is having to, is having to be asked for the same thing to them.

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:24:28) - You know, they provide the data at once. I see process can also solve things. And the other thing that process can do is it can kind of help you, help you kind of make sure that if an adverse event, something does happen, you get an unhappy client, come on board. Um, what the process can do is, you know, the process is the place. If you've got it embedded properly in your business, the process is the place where you can go to make the change to make sure that, um, make sure that that issue that, that client's had never happens again. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:24:55) - Yup, yup. A hundred percent agreement. And you're absolutely right. It's, that's why I think so many, um, modern growth focus companies on one hand, they do a phenomenal job of really trying to leverage their tools and their technology to be able to essentially create all of those given processes that their team or that their customers are going through. On the other hand, w w will you joke joked about with, you know, 10 plus tools, 20 plus tools, that's also, that's also where some, at some different points of the journey there is breakdowns, or there is disruption, or there is internal consternation or extra external consternation that sort of develops. But I think that the net of it Allister, it's like bottom line, having folks on your team who are having these conversations, uh, I love your point earlier about just like, don't this can't be a once a year audit even on the tool side. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:25:43) - Right. Cause because of how intertwined tools and process are, this is like I would argue monthly, there needs to be at least a high level assessment and reviews of just how the general toolkit health is going. And then it's definitely an, an external conversation for the customer side. And then it's definitely an internal conversation for your employees, right. Because if your employees are going to be, um, uh, you know, just, just miffed about the way that you're kind of leveraging your tools or even what tools you're using to your point, you mentioned a bunch of some of the global leading tools, right? So some of the, some of the, some of the biggest software companies in the world, some of the tools that you mentioned, and it's important to call that stuff out because there's huge opportunity for your customer experience and your employee experience inside of that world. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:26:23) - Um, Allister, we've already talked a ton about process, but I, I'm going to ask you a different question for the third six pillar process day. Cause we've, we're, we're wrapping it in all the pillars, which is phenomenal. I, by the way, I'm a firm believer process absolutely supports all of the four pillars. I'm one of the, one of the biggest believers in that. But w w if you had to narrow it down a guest to like, if there was, you know, just like one or two key things that any startup founder or any business executive could be thinking about to help from an executive sponsorship perspective with supporting how their team builds out their process builds out their playbooks, how they keep the, maybe how they keep those, those playbooks updated, or how they do the controlling and the monitoring to keep a tight process. What, what are like the, like the two things that you want our listeners to kind of leave today's show, um, just being like hyper-focused on, as they think about their own teams, playbooks and process 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:27:16) - For me, um, we, we, we kind of do a, a dirty word assessment, which is on the some recent.com website. And in there, we kind of assess people to four parameters as to how, how, how healthy their business in terms of process and it's consistency, empowerment, improvement, and trust. I think it says trust is the one, trust is the one that, um, that when people do the tests, scores lowest in terms of consistency, are you, are you running things consistently? Um, are you empowering people and those two conflict, pardon me? Right. Because consistency typically about putting process in place that restricts empowerment. So how do you say, how do you, how do you balance those two and then how are you improving things? Because a lot of people look at process and say, um, you know, processes is, they think process is locked down and actually we're in an ever-changing innovative world 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:28:10) - Is to move on and say, the things need to improve. And then trust is, is, is all about, um, is all about kind of, uh, you know, are you, are you kind of, are you micromanaging from above or are you letting people get on with it? And that, and, you know, do the people in your team feel, feel that they are trusted? So if a client has a problem, they have the remit to be able to try and fix that problem and make that client happy, or do they feel restricted and sort of don't dare do anything that they know the client would want because they feel they'll get in trouble for it. So, you know, there's these four parameters that are really important for, for me. Um, I think that the one, the one that I think is the hardest and the one, I think people need to go that well, there's 2, 1, 1 is about having consistency and empowering, you know, how do you, how do you address, how are you going to do.

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:28:57) - And that we that's kind of, that's what these are. The key things that come out of my book are there, they're also have what the product process has helps with, you know, that, that balance between those two things. So you can have an empowered team. That's also doing things consistently cause they conflict and the other, the other things that that's interesting is that is there is the trust aspect and it's really a leadership thing. I know, I think in a way, sometimes I relate to leadership books and I think they're all on the same top. They're all on the same topic and it's letting go, you know? Um, and as a, as a business owner, you grew up in this business and you want it to be perfect. So you're kind of on top of it and you're, you're you, you're policing quality everywhere and it comes across as micromanaging and, and, and you know, you, and cause you want this business to be perfect. You want customers to be happy. And what you don't realize is that if you just stopped doing that and that everybody else fill the gap 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:29:46) - And yeah, you go through a little puppy, go through a little Patrick, it gets worse, but coming out the other side, you get all these people who are all of a sudden, far more motivators. And, and, and, and they're doing a much better job of looking after the clients and improving things. And then, then that's when you get a trust. So trust is an interesting one because it's a leap of faith. So, so to answer your question, the two things I think you've got to work on, and they're quite high level and theoretical in a way is how are you going to, how are you going to get things done consistently whilst, whilst still empowering your team and how are you going to get over that hump so that your team grow into the gap you leave behind because they won't steal it from you. You have to create the gap for them to, but then when you create that gap, it causes some pain, but it's worth it in the long run. So yeah, 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:30:29) - I love it. And that's all those are, those are awesome, awesome pieces of advice. Um, Allister, I'd love to dive into the, the fourth and final CX pillar of feedback. Um, uh, so Eddy share a process bliss, even at some of the, the, the, the big places that you mentioned that you were working even earlier in career. I'd love to kind of have you spend a few minutes, just kind of giving you some ideas for what are some of the, the, the, the, the best ways and the most effective ways that you've been able to kind of get customer feedback. So, so customer feedback is a huge part of it. And then I'd love to kinda hear you flip it onto the other side, some of the best ways that you've been able to kind of collect that team feedback and that employee feedback. So about a few minutes kind of talking about what, what, what you've learned with, um, feedback. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:31:11) - Yeah. So, so in that promoter score is great. I love net promoter score. Uh, you need to be a certain size of where you can do it for a startup, but once you've got an that promoter score, it, you know, they say, um, they say, do what you measure. And, uh, people do what they imagine measure. And net promoter score is a great way of measuring because it's a benchmark. And because it doesn't, it just gives you a it's the ability to benchmark other companies in your sector or other companies in the west. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:31:38) - Um, it's absolutely, uh, Savage fibers in terms of other feedback from, um, from customers and how you get that feedback. I think it's, I don't know how much of your population, so listeners a SAS, but it really is difficult to get feedback in SAS because people expect to sign up online, play with a product walk away, and they don't. The last thing they want is a conversation with somebody about, about kind of, um, power of what was going wrong. So, I mean, I think, I think what you've got to do is, is, is get, as, as we said earlier, get close to the clients that you've got build a relationship. So you can have those conversations and find out what's working and what's not, and they'll build a level of trust. So they don't mind admitting to you that, you know, this better, the product is a little bit crap. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:32:23) - Um, and this, you know, and so, so you, you, you can get that feedback in terms of, I mean, I'm not a big, I think that to me is that is the most valuable aspect that kind of direct verbal stuff. I think sometimes it's really hard to interpret anything statistic based. There's loads of there's loads of tools that you can, you can have that we'll, we'll assess, you know, we'll, we'll monitor, you know, where people break down on their signup journey and all this sort of stuff. And some of that can be really useful, but some of it can be so misleading because you don't really understand where the customer is or what they're doing. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:32:51) - I completely agree. Yep. Yep. Keep going. 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:32:56) - No, no. I was going to say, if you can afford it, you, you know, you, you get, get a customer and set them at the product much more, much better to get a couple of cars at potential, a new visitor, put them in front of the product and watch them and say what, after the, at the end and say, why did you do that? Why did you do that? That's so much more valuable than, than, um, than having a database of a thousand signups and trying to work out, you know, what, what happened to those sign-ups 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:33:18) - I, I love that idea and to be perfectly honest. So a lot of the work that we've been doing with, with some of our clients at cxchronicles, it's almost like the, this future evolution or this future potential focus area for so many.

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:33:31) - Customer success managers and account managers and people that are really there. They're in the business to keep customers happy, keep customers engaged, keep customer conversations happening. You just, now that man, I couldn't agree more with that's one of the biggest value adders that you can, you can provide to a customer as a, as, as a customer success leader. The other part too is just, that's the most incredible type of enriched feedback. So I completely agree with you too. I think Ian, uh, MPS and customer satisfaction, customer repertory, those are all fantastic. They give you great clear insights. They give you benchmarks there's enough, notable information and data and just genuine, um, performance results out there where you can absolutely kind of see how you stack and stack and rank compared to some others, but nothing beats what the last part that you just said where you actually they're having those meaningful customer conversations, customer listening tours. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:34:21) - If you can build or bake into your customer portfolio management strategy, the way that you have incredible, um, folks, every single day, talking to those customers, plugging that information and plugging that valuable, uh, feedback into your CRM or wherever you're doing your account overviews or wherever you keeping all of your customer communications log. And then over time, um, blending that stuff, man, there should be somebody on the team who is thinking about, um, what are the trends? What are the themes? What are the buckets? What are the different things that we continue to see, uh, at a high frequency rate? What are the things where it's like, wait a minute, this is, this is super low frequency. It might be interesting. It might be something that you're never going to do anything with. But like my point is that is super, super important. The last part too is, I mean, one of the biggest parts, I think the most CX and CS leadership, uh, w one of their biggest jobs, it's socializing that stuff. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:35:07) - So like, you've got to, you've got to make sure that people across the entire business, whether it's marketing sales, product analytics, these people need to understand what the stuff is so that everybody can take that back to their, their own subject matter expertise area in the business and leverage that usable feedback. I think it's, and there's frankly, I know that there's a ton of companies out there that are doing an incredible job with this. There's a lot of companies out there that are crushing it that don't really think about this. So there's a huge opportunity right there for businesses that aren't really leveraging. Some of that 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:35:35) - Couldn't agree more, 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:35:37) - But also we'll look, this has been absolutely fantastic, man. I'm super appreciative of you coming on and sharing your story, sharing your background has been, uh, tons of interesting insights and learnings in this one. Before we wrap up my friend, where can people, um, get in touch with you and where can people find out more about process bliss and where can people find the dirty word? My friend, 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:35:55) - We put together a landing page for you, a process plus.com forward slash CX go. That, um, there's a guy that you can either go to find where to buy the dirty word book, uh, or learn about process plus. And I think they may have even included, uh, a free offer on process, best fit for, for a period of Six months free offer. So yeah, a process.com/cx. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:36:21) - Fantastic. And we'll put that in the show notes guys, so everybody can follow that link back to find, to find Allister and the team. And then, um, Alistair in terms of just any, anything coming up for you guys, any, any presentations you guys have anything big that are coming up, that you're getting excited for in the upcoming months ahead. Anything you want people to know about, or maybe, uh, to kind of follow some of, some of the work that you and the team of process splits are doing? 

Alister Esam, Process Bliss (00:36:42) - Yeah, we were the biggest thing we're working on at the moment within the kind of process this team is, is, is just some really cool new features into the product. So we've got some, we've got a new feature coming out, which will allow you to generate web forms, which kick off processes. So if you wanted to deal with, you know, someone who's a, you know, customer inquiries or customer, um, customer complaints or anything to do with, you know, you can just generate a really quick web form, uh, provide people the link they can go in and they can just register that they kind of, they can basically kick off internal processes within your business for those customers. So, um, I think that Scott has got a multitude of users and users, and, um, I'm really interested to see what, you know, what sort of customer service pieces people will put it to. Cause we developed it generically because, you know, we took client feedback and they, they kind of, they, you can see how they're gonna, they're gonna use that. But it's one of those things where there's, there's hundreds and hundreds of ways that that could be used, um, to kind of add up the power for a customer to kick off an internal process in your business. 

Adrian, CXChronicles (00:37:44) - That's what we need. That's what we need our listeners thinking more about how the, how can you guys do exactly what algebras, Ellisor just said and your business, because at the end of the day, that is like the power of CX and CS guy. So Allison has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on and joining the cxchronicles podcast.