Content Allies is a B2B podcast networking service which seeks to empower clients by helping them build meaningful relationships and grow their customer base. Podcasts are used as a key marketing channel.
We spoke to CEO Jake Jorgovan to find out how Content Allies uses Process Street to slash business costs, improve efficiency, and drive business growth.
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It’s 4 p.m. and you’ve got a welcome call with your newest team member. Ideally, you’d feel full of life, ready to welcome her with enthusiasm and get her excited about the weeks to come.
Problem is, this is your 6th video call of the day and you’re overrun with Zoom fatigue.
You’ve been turned “on” (not in a good way) for the last 7 hours and are severely lacking in enthusiasm, let alone excitement.
The worst thing is, the majority of those meetings were unnecessary, everything covered in them could’ve been communicated asynchronously.
Simply put, asynchronous communication involves communicating remotely without expecting an immediate response. This can be done via iMessage, pre-recorded video/audio, making suggestions to an existing project (think: Google Docs/Sheets, Github, Jira).
The challenge is knowing, when and how to use synchronous vs. asynchronous communication methods. Fortunately, this post is here to teach you just that so you can avoid Zoom fatigue and stop being real-time, all the time. Feel free to skip to a specific section of the post using the links below.
Let’s get started!
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Do you have a brand that you go back to, time and time again?
If you do, what is it about this brand that’s captured your loyalty?
I do not doubt that an exceptional customer experience plays its part. That is, think about how that brand makes you feel. Good huh?
According to Bain & Company, businesses that invest time and effort to optimize their customer experience (CX) flows, experience above-market revenue growth between 4-8%. With the vast choice of products, services and brands available, exceptional customer experience comes as the ultimate seduction and differentiation for businesses to stand out above competitors.
In this Process Street article, you’ll learn how to engage your customers at every point in their journey with you. You’ll learn how to consistently create a service with a smile, a product to praise, and a beloved brand.
Learn from the best as we take a glimpse into the CX operations used by the likes of Netflix, Microsoft, and of course Process Street. You’ll then be given 5 tips on how you can optimize your CX flows, taking into account the changing business landscape, and the impacts of digitalization on customer behavior and experience.
Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all for an in-depth understanding of CX.
Let’s jump to it!
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I hate email.
Who really likes answering emails? You get into work, switch everything on, and right off the bat there’s an inbox full of company memos, check-ins from your line manager, updates from colleagues, reminders for meeting after meeting after meeting…
It’s not a great way to start the day, amiright?
Well – and I am totally going to gloat about this – that’s just not how we roll at Process Street. If you’ve hung around us for five minutes, you’re probably aware that we are Slack superfans here on the Street. All of our company communication happens through Slack, and it’s been life-changing.
I’m not just saying this to stir up envy, though. Being such Slack aficionados, we’ve figured out how to use Slack features to increase productivity, improve collaboration, and just plain make our day-to-day easier.
I’ve broken them down into three easy sections, so no matter your level, you can jump straight to the tips you need – and hey, no one’s gonna judge if you want a little refresher!
Ready to dive in?
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“Well-defined values don’t sound like the safe platitudes of a Hallmark card” – Patrick M. Lencioni, Management guru
Lencioni also wrote that “Most values statements are bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest. [They] create cynical and dispirited employees, alienate customers, and undermine managerial credibility.”
For early stage startups, formal value statements are multi-functional; they should help your team understand and act on your internal best practices and empower them to make decisions that will benefit the company as a whole.
These values are the boundaries within which your business will operate in pursuit of its goals, and set the tone for day-to-day operations.
Think of core values as one of the three pillars of principle holding up your business operations; the other two being mission and vision.
In this Process Street article, we’ll explore why core values are important, how they align with mission and vision, and some examples of core values from other companies.
We’ve also got some statements from our own team about how they live and act on our own internal values in their day-to-day work.
When I was still teaching, the three main points of advice I found myself repeating were:
As it turns out, those three statements apply to most things in life – including business. Especially business.
I know. We’ve been in an era of calculated risk, mainlining entrepreneurial spirit, and the pervasive (-ly annoying) go-big-or-go-home philosophy for so long that “going above and beyond” isn’t even status quo; it’s bare minimum requirements.
Hear me out.
No matter what else you’re doing with your company, you have to take care of your customers. You have to understand them: what they want, what they need, and what they will need down the road.
That understanding of your customer and their relationship with your product is a crucial aspect of becoming a successful product-oriented business.
So you’ve read our previous post on product-led growth (PLG) and now know all the nuts and bolts of a PLG go-to-market strategy. It’s a super-exciting concept and exactly the direction you’ve wanted to take your company in.
But. (There’s always a “but.”)
Your business – the entire customer lifecycle every user of your product goes through – revolves around the traditional sales-led approach of painstakingly coaxing every customer through each step of the sales cycle from demo to trial to paying user.
You can’t go in tomorrow morning, clear out all your established processes, and tell your sales team: Right, we’re totally changing everything right this second. Even if your sales team doesn’t laugh you out of the office, it’s not going to work.
So how do you navigate that transition and maintain your success?
I didn’t know the answer to that, so for this Process Street post, I went straight to the horse’s mouth ( ) and asked PLG champ, author, and founder Wes Bush about how to make PLG work and become a successful, product-oriented company.
Let’s get started!
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This is a guest post by Ray Slater Berry, a freelance writer for Chameleon with over nine years of content marketing and social media experience. He specializes in product tech, travel, SaaS and working one time as a CMO at Study Clerk. Ray is also a published fiction writer, with his first novel titled Golden Boy.
“Every dollar invested in ease of use returns $10 to $100.” – IBM, The ROI of UX
The above statement was made by the global business powerhouse, IBM. The company explains that it’s far more economical to consider user needs early in the design process than to try and solve them later. Based on the returns given in the above quote, we can calculate an ROI of 9,900%.
And considering the user needs early is exactly what a user experience (UX) map does, meaning creating an effective UX map has the potential to bridge the gap between business success and failure.
By understanding your user’s needs in the early stages of a design process, you’re more likely to consistently meet those needs, meaning a happy customer and reduced churn.
This is why we at Process Street have produced this article, your practical guide to user experience mapping.
Welcome and gather around the user experience campfire. Grab a marshmallow on a stick, a cup of something hot, and relax. Today you’ll learn the ins of outs of user experience maps and how you can create one in the leanest way possible.
Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding user experience mapping.
Once upon a time, in a land not so far from here…
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This is a guest post written by Ashley Ferro, a freelance content writer & copywriter specializing in SEO content marketing.
It’s all too common to find yourself wading through your organization’s shared folders in search of the file you’ve been asked to review:
Why does this happen? Why can’t everyone just use proper file naming conventions? The reasons can be lack of proper internal policy or procedure for naming and organizing files, lack of any consideration for folder or information architecture, and just plain carelessness.
With a small amount of effort, you can establish proper file naming conventions and avoid this kind of document spaghetti. The more organized you can be with your internal information, the more efficient and effective you can be in your business goals.
Just imagine – seeing neat, intuitively named folders, knowing which folders contain the documents you’re looking for, and – take a seat – having confidence that the file you’re about to click on will be what you expect it to be.
In this Process Street article, we’ll cover:
It’s 4:55 on a sunny Friday afternoon. You have a whole weekend of relaxing in the backyard planned. Maybe you’ll have friends over for a barbecue, or finally finish that crime thriller you started last year and forgot about. There’s always that super-extended director’s cut of a film from four years ago that just came out.
You’re blissfully contemplating all your stress-free options when your line manager pops their head in and cheerily says, “HR wants to see you first thing Monday morning. Have a great weekend!”
The truth is, the role of HR teams – and even the name – has evolved quite a bit over the years, though its reputation hasn’t been quite so quick to keep up. People Teams, as all the start-ups are calling it these days, still have a vital role to play in the structure and organization of a company, though.
So, when is it time to create a super team-up for your start-up? More importantly, how do you do it?
I sat down with Process Street’s own VP of People, Jay Hanlon, to talk:
Come on in and have a seat!
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Does anyone have the number for Jeff Bezos?
He owes me over $10,000.
Thanks to his 1-Click checkout, I must’ve purchased at least $10,000 worth of stuff that I didn’t need or want. He’s made it way too easy to purchase from Amazon and it’s got to stop.
So, yeah if you have his number I will…Wait… What’s that?
Bezos didn’t come up with the 1-Click checkout idea? It wasn’t his idea to make it possible to buy a Tibetan Buddhist necklace worth $169,000 in one single click?
Well, if it wasn’t entrepreneurial Bezos, the innovator and founder of Amazon and the Blue Origin spaceship, then who on earth was it?
Regular Amazon employee, programmer, and intrapreneur: Peri Hartman.
Thanks to Peri’s pioneering checkout idea and Amazon’s unwavering belief in intrapreneurship (harnessing the power of innovation from within the workplace), the 1-Click checkout gave Amazon a huge competitive advantage, re-wrote the entire book on eCommerce, and ruined my life. They also made a cool $177bn by slapping a patent on it and licensing the idea out to others.
But despite this example, many companies fail to harness the power of their existing internal innovators. Preferring instead to hire external resources to execute ground-breaking ideas, boost competitor advantage, and improve ways of working.
So, taking more intrapreneurial examples from the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google, this Process Street post will help you understand the importance of intrapreneurship and shine a light on the hidden entrepreneurial resources that lie within your company:
Ready to see what’s right in front of your nose?
