90% of customers feel that the companies they buy from could do better when it comes to how they experience onboarding.

Customer success is about helping your customers understand and leverage the value of your product; you’re basically helping them achieve their goals. In a sense it’s one step beyond traditional customer support, taking a proactive approach to understanding and addressing customer needs.

A key component of customer success is making sure your customers are effectively onboarded.

Onboarding provides a unique opportunity for the CS team to nurture and address the key needs of a new customer, and an effective onboarding program can mean the difference between a long-term customer and a rapid churn.

For customer success teams to succeed with onboarding, CS managers should drive clear best practices and use well-structured processes to make onboarding as effortless as possible for everyone involved.

In this Process Street article, we’ll dive into:

• Customer success onboarding best practices
• Designing your customer success onboarding framework
• The customer onboarding process
• Measuring success with key customer success onboarding metrics

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You are an HR leader at an executive search firm and you have landed a big client, who has agreed to kick-off a retained search with your company. What’s your next move?

Who am I to know anything about executive retained search? Well, I am an ex-associate from one of the top executive recruiting firms in the industry. In an article from the Economist about corporate headhunters, it was said that:

“Nobody has ever studied to become a headhunter but the profession is becoming more diverse. Those serving in its ranks include ex-engineers, a former Olympic gymnast…”

– and me, a former visual artist and administrative assistant. Working in executive search, I developed a deep understanding of how each role on the search team can greatly influence the quality and success of the retained search.

The executive search business has been operating since the first World War, through the 1940s. According to AESC (The Association of Executive Recruiting Consultants), it’s likely that Thorndike Deland formed the concept of executive search back in 1926 when he founded the first retained executive recruiting firm.

Meaning, the executive retained search industry has been evolving for over 90 years and will continue to evolve with the digital revolution. Although, there are elements of the retained search business that will remain constant, like the drive to deliver the highest quality service.

I believe it’s crucial for everyone on the executive retained search team to understand how they fit together within the retained search process. However, to impact the performance of your retained search, you have to work on the system. 94% of problems and opportunities for improvement belong to the system, not the individual.

In this post, you’ll learn the difference between a retained search and a contingent search, how to optimize the retained search process (based on my personal experience and reports backed up by leading firms in the industry), and how to maximize the efficiency of your process, especially in the era of remote work (using digital tools like Process Street).

• What is a retained search?
• What is the difference between a retained & contingent search?
• The process of a retained search
• 5 lessons on how to run an effective retained search
• Mediocre to exceptional

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We’ve all been there: an hour and a half into a 45-minute meeting. You’re trying to reach a consensus but as one department makes a suggestion, the next disagrees.

Customer success insists the next product should be geared towards students; sales thinks their parents are a better demographic. Content marketing started out by spitballing potential names until someone brought up the latest Process Street post and they all got sidetracked discussing whether it’s better to use odd or even numbers in a post title. Social marketing is scrolling through newsfeeds and graphic design isn’t even sure what they’re doing in this meeting at all.

It should have been simple: get everyone together, brainstorm ideas, then form a game-plan and timeline to use moving forward. Except no one can agree on anything and, at this rate, the only accomplishment the meeting will have made is wasting everyone’s afternoon.

Group decision-making is complicated. Fortunately, there are processes for that.

You may have already read our post on DECIDE, which is a great decision-making process for individuals. However, what works for an individual does not necessarily translate to a group. In this post, I’m going to introduce you to one of the most popular group decision-making frameworks: DACI.

The DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed) decision-making framework is a set of processes geared toward doing just that. As a variant of the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) responsibility matrix, DACI’s emphasis on decision clarity for complex projects often makes it the go-to framework for product managers.

That’s a lot of acronyms all at once, huh?

Don’t worry. We’ll take it slow – or you can jump straight to the point:

• Group decision-making: yay or nay?
• What is DACI?
• DACI and Atlassian’s Team Playbook
• How to create your own DACI framework (with free template)
• Other ways Process Street can streamline your decision-making processes

Let’s get some decisions made!
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Project management requires a wide spectrum of skills, organizational abilities, and attention to detail to make sure everything moves forward according to plan. A good project manager is able to keep all the plates spinning in sync while making it appear effortless at the same time.

However, the more plates you have spinning at once, the harder this is to accomplish. Critical path method (CPM) is one of the tools project managers can use to create a comprehensive plan and organize complex projects with many moving parts.

In this Process Street post, I’ll take you through the CPM process step-by-step, and then show you how our templates and checklists can take some of the stress out of your project management.

Read on, or feel free to skip ahead:

• Project management 101
• What is critical path method?
• Steps to effectively (and easily) use the critical path method
• Project management with Process Street

Let’s jump in!
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At 5 AM on August 29, 2005, the largest drainage canal in New Orleans, the 17th Street Canal, was breached by torrents of water, an hour before Hurricane Katrina struck the city.

Levees and floodwalls fell in 50 different locations, flooding 80% of the city – under 15 feet of water in some parts.

No doubt the system failed. But which system?

The Bush administration claimed the break couldn’t have been foreseen. Scientists claimed they’d given warnings about that exact situation for nearly ten years previous. The US Army Corps of Engineers blamed the city; the city blamed the engineers.

It could be said – and many have – that in this case, it wasn’t the levee system that failed that day, but the human system certainly did. Later, experts determined that budget cuts, outdated engineering, and inadequate process infrastructures are what led to the disaster.

But that was 2005, and something of that magnitude couldn’t blindside us again.

Right…?

At Process Street, we’ve been paying very close attention to the different responses to the COVID-19 outbreak. This post is going to look at seven of the most notable system failures that occurred during the pandemic, why they happened, and how they could have been prevented.

• Why do systems fail?
• What have been the biggest COVID-19 system failures so far?
• How to (easily) build a fail-proof systems

Let’s get started.
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Way back in 2014, we first tried our hand at launching on Product Hunt with an early version of Process Street. It got featured, but that was a different time; when Product Hunt’s staff manually selected each product feature (these days Product Hunt claims that an automated algorithm decides).

It was hunted (Product Hunt lingo for “promoted”) by Audrey Melnik of Funnel Ventures, didn’t even have a maker (another Product Hunt termin for the creators of a product), yet still found its way to the front page of Product Hunt.

Six years, a couple of relaunches, and a $12 million Series A on from that humble effort, Process Street has changed a fair bit. We’ve shipped over 30 products on Product Hunt; from podcasts, new Process Street feature launches, to whole product launches, to eBooks.

Some of them were great successes, with multiple top 4 spots and a whole bunch of front-page features. Others weren’t so great; some garnered next to no traction and were essentially dead-on-arrival.

The point of this article is to impart some of the lessons we’ve learned, from common myths and misconceptions, to what worked well for us (and what didn’t work so well).

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ll be covering:

• Why you should care about Product Hunt
• Common misconceptions about Product Hunt launches
• How to prepare for a Product Hunt launch (free checklist)
• Key takeaways: How to have a successful Product Hunt launch

Let’s start with the basics, which often get taken for granted when it comes to deciding whether or not to launch on Product Hunt.
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Call center quality assurance is like going to the dentist: everyone agrees it should be done regularly, no one likes doing it, and it’s probably been put off much longer than it should.

No one’s blaming you – agents hate it, supervisors hate it, even quality assurance auditors hate it. It’s tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive. Add to that the high call center attrition rate and low job satisfaction, and you may be wondering: why even bother?

Well, I’ll tell you. In this post, I’ll cover:

• What is call center quality assurance?
• Why is call center quality assurance important?
• How to overcome your QA obstacles
• 11 free call center quality assurance templates
• Automate your workflow with Process Street + Zapier

Plus I’ll provide you with 11 free checklists to take the drudgery out of QA audits!

If you came for the templates, grab them here:

• Call Center Agent Training Program Checklist Template
• Call Center Quality Assurance (QA) Agent Training Process Checklist Template
• Call Center Quality Assurance Structure Template
• Call Center Quality Assurance Audit Template
• Call Center Customer Service Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Sales Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Outbound Sales Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Helpdesk Quality Assurance Form
• Call Center Metrics Calculation Checklist Template
• Manager Weekly Report Checklist Template
• Daily Supervisor Checklist

If you want to use these checklists, just sign in with your Process Street account and start customizing your templates. If you don’t have an account yet, sign-up here to get started with your free trial!

Otherwise, let’s get to it.
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This is a guest post from Adam Enfroy. He writes about how to blog like a startup to 450,000 monthly readers at www.adamenfroy.com, & teaches his audience of New School Bloggers the tactics he used to scale his blog to $80k/month MRR.

As a product marketer, increasing your landing page conversion rates through optimization has a significant impact on your bottom line.

You spend most of your time running A/B tests and tracking your conversion rates because you’re trying to optimize conversions and prove the ROI of your PPC campaigns.

Nonetheless, you still can’t seem to grasp why your visitors behave the way they do.

So, what’s your solution?

Using qualitative research to understand the reasons behind your visitors’ behavior so that you optimize your landing page and skyrocket your conversion rates.

In this article, I’ll explain the ROI of qualitative research, different methods to conduct it, and how to analyze your research data within your database. I’ll also demonstrate how Process Street’s superpowered checklists can help you perform optimized qualitative user research.

To jump to a specific section of the post click the appropriate link below. Alternatively, just keep scrolling.

• The value of qualitative user research for landing page optimization
• How to analyze your qualitative user research
• Landing page optimization in action using qualitative user research
• Use qualitative user research and boost your conversion

Ready? Let’s get started.

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Studies show that moving towards a leaner business model can improve productivity by up to 25%, increase stock turnover by 33%, and increase on-time delivery by 26%.

The recognized benefits of being lean are only accumulating, with more and more studies advocating lean approaches in business for both economical and sustainable success.

However, some companies choose not to embrace lean philosophy through fear that the costs related outweigh the benefits gained. With this, we at Process Street have come to help.

You see, this fear has oozed from imperfect implementation and a misunderstanding. With the right lean tools and techniques, lean thinking can easily and successfully be applied.

In this article, we present you with our top 8 lean tools to assist you in implementing lean philosophy for your business or line of work. By using these tools, you will see a transformation, with maximal value and minimal waste.

Along with these tools, we grant you access to our template resources, which you can hop in and use right away for free.

Click on the relevant subheaders below to read the section of choice, alternatively scroll down for all I have to say.

• What is lean?
• The 5 lean principles
• Lean tools: Our top 8 lean tools to assist lean principle application
• Lean tools and the benefits they give
• Lean software tools you should use today

Keen to become lean? Let’s jump in!
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Etymologically-speaking, the word “template” has an interesting history. Our modern usage of it is linked to the Proto-Indo-European word “tempos”, which means “to stretch”. Specifically, though, it refers to time and the stretching of it.

As time-bound human beings, making use of templates allows us to have more time each day. By completing recurring processes and actions far faster overall whether they’re marketing processes or sales processes, we’re able to, in a way, cheat time itself.

For sales teams, templates are a necessity for both cheating time and doing great work, repeatedly.

Seeing as 20% of sales staff turnover happens within the first 45 days, there needs to be a thorough, documented template for how to onboard staff properly. Similarly, for the sales process itself, there needs to be a sales process template (or better yet, templates).

With such playbooks at hand, it could help your team become high performers by a whopping 33%!

That’s why, in this Process Street post, I’ll discuss what a sales process template is, provide you with a stellar sales process template, and tell you how you can use more or even build your own templates from scratch.

Just read through the following sections:

• What is a sales process template?
• Why sales lead qualification is the most important sales process
• Have sales reps utilize a template for every stage of the sales process
• Use Process Street to revolutionize your sales team!

Or, if you can’t wait and want to start using the aforementioned stellar sales process template, here’s our MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template:

Click here to get the MEDDIC Sales Process Checklist Template!

Carry on reading to find out how to cheat time further. ⏳

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