Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Talking About Company Culture, Contact Center Cactus Chat

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Eric Mulvin, Talking About Company Culture, Contact Center Cactus Chat. Eric sits down with the first person he has ever hired at Pac Biz, director of company culture Kiezia, as they go over how the growth and retention of the staff impacts customer experience and turnover. Pac-Biz.com/podcast

Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Malvin, and I know I always say we've got a special guest. We have an extra special guest today because we have the very first person that I ever hired, started this all 10 years ago, Keisha Aguila. And so welcome to the show and thanks for being a guest today. Thanks for having me. All right. So today, you know, because we talk about on the show outsourcing, customer experience, managing your call center. And so what better person to bring on the show and interview than Keisha? Because the story I like to say is besides her being the very first employee number one, she was, I made her director of company culture like crazy early on in the company. Like we had like 20 employees. And so

that has been so key to the growth and retention of the staff here at Pacbiz because she's the person that helps make the culture what it is today. So that's what we're going to be talking about today is company culture and how it impacts the customer experience, how it impacts the call center, the turnover, and we're going to share some stories about what you've learned and what you've experienced working with me and being the first person at Pactness all these years. And so, yeah, you ready? I am excited and it has been really like a wonderful journey, amazing journey, I would say for 10 years.

So yeah, let's get started. Yeah, I think it's very fitting. This is the last episode that we're recording of the eighth anniversary series. I'm getting ready to fly back home to Dumaguete. I'm here in Dumaguete and I'm getting ready to with my co-host Jake just a little bit ago about how these trips, when I come out here, it really helped me reflect because when I'm at home and I'm in Phoenix, I don't really see you guys. I mean, we were on Zoom, but it's not the same. And I'm always thinking about growth and what's next. And know like well we're both like that we're always thinking like many steps ahead but when I come out here I get a chance to reflect and to really see like what we've built and uh you know after eight years it's pretty incredible you know

looking back at it I mean so yeah like we're I mean tell me about your journey of the last 10 years. So yeah, Eric just mentioned eight because I've worked even before we started PathBiz. So before PathBiz, it has been an interesting story that I had with Eric and how I really started with working with a company. So Eric and I, we both love both love photography and yeah we've been chatting about it i was i was still in college at the time so i'm fond of taking photos and then yeah just one it was like one night eric chatted to me hey um you know that i'm i have this taxi business in phoenix and i need somebody to take calls if you know anyone from the university and i said oh i i i didn't have any friends actually so

and yeah it was just from you know intuition and i said am. Why, why not just me? I'm gonna do it. So that was how, um, it started. Um, I was finishing my college that time and it's interesting how the universe would conspire because I was like, you know, you need to have a, a plan, what you're to do with your degree. And I really didn't know what I want to do with sociology. But I had to, you know, I had to set something, my direction. So I said, I'm going to teach.

I'm going to teach in the university. I'm going to take master's, which I absolutely did while working with Achuk of that time. which I absolutely did while working with Achuka at that time. And yeah, I was in that state of, you know, state of questioning what I'm going to do. So that's the time that you messaged me, you did somebody and said, oh, okay, I jump in and then... Timing is everything. Yeah, right timing.

And so it was perfect timing. And I started working with Aaron. Thank you for saying yes, because, I mean, that could have all fallen apart if you wouldn't have stepped up. And we didn't find any, we didn't get this thing going. I don't know if we'd be celebrating this eight-year anniversary today. So that's the journey. Like, that's how we got started. You know, the call center thing, uh, the taxi business, actually just, it struggled a bit. Uh, we, we ended up shutting it down a couple, like maybe

a year and a half after we started the call center out here. Uh, so what was that like? Cause you were there when things like shut down, that was your job. We were paying you for not only you, but we brought other people in. Like we had a recipe. Was that, was she there at that time yet or no? Yeah, we were at like, um, yeah, like five people, three people. And Jake, Ryan, I, yeah. And run some podcast co-hosts here and raspy so four

and then raspy who's our qa manager uh the the core of some of our leaders here at pact is that's how we got our start and they started out on the phones um but what was it like when you found out that we're closing down the taxi business there was a lot of uncertainty you're like i don't know what were you guys thinking here right so i i took a break for you know it was like the first time i really took a break from schooling and it was three months for me and then eric found an opportunity to work with a taxi with these local taxi in Arizona. And what was it like for me was like, I was in that, you know, crossroad again because taking calls was probably like the last thing I would do when I would hang when I think um volunteered to take calls for true pal but yeah there's a reason why I just did that without thinking

and yeah if you remember Eric I actually told you that I'm going back to uh to my hometown right I do and I was like how are you going to keep working with me there? And it's not going to work. And it was the start of you offering me about, or you got this, because I know you always have this thing about company culture. And there was a time when you offered me to do marketing plus a company culture. So I said, okay, I'm going to stay and try that.

Yeah, cool. And so there we go, 2015. We started Pact Biz. And I think one of the keys to success over all these years is me giving you no direction. I don't, I mean, I give you a little things like, hey, can you do this or that? But for the most part, I'm not really telling you how to ruin company culture. I'm just like giving you the complete free, just, I think my, I don't know what I've exactly said, but if I were to guess now, I think it was probably something like, let's just make the job fun.

Let's make it a great place to work. And you kind of took it from there. Right? I mean, I don't know. Right. I don't think I gave you a lot of direction. Right. That was it.

They said, Oh, something fun for the company. Um, so that was the only thing that I did, you said to me to do. And you know, in the Philippines, you don't really focus, like most of the companies, especially BPO, they don't really hire the, like, it's really like rare for them to hire somebody to do company culture. So it's like really a special job. I don't know what you had in mind or your vision

about where the company is going, I don't know what you had in mind or your vision about where the company is going, but for sure you'd have something that you had in out my own how I'm going to do this. But yeah, as I always say on the employee presentation, I would always say the company culture is your mission. Yeah. How true is that? It is true you know we like i think one of the inspirations for starting pacbiz was that uh you know i grew up coming out here i didn't live here but i grew up in phoenix but you know i i got an opportunity to come out here and visit maybe every five or so years. And some of the biggest employers out here are call centers.

And I got to hear stories. We had family that worked with them. And I'd hear stories about how they treated the staff. And, you know, like people, I always hear from our staff here that you're not just a number. And, you know, when people are just a number and they're just not really even human anymore, they're just like, they're easily replaceable.

You could swap them out. And so if you don't value the employees, you know, there's a lot of weird things that start to happen without going into too much detail on those stories I heard about, I thought there's gotta be a better way to take care of these employees. And you know, we, how can we make this a job that they love, and how can we make this a job that they don't leave, like, I don't want, for me, if I were to work at a place, I don't want to keep moving around every six months, like, there's something wrong with that job if I'm leaving, or, you know, you're trying to change careers, that's one thing, but when you're going job to

job to job, and it's a revolving door at that office so you go in and you know everyone else is also moving in and out something's wrong and you know whose fault is that who has control over that that those are decisions purposely made or not made they're they're either doing things or purposely not doing things to make that not the best job. And, you know, I think we were doing the workshop yesterday and I think it was one of the quotes on there. If you're an employer, you have an obligation, you have a responsibility to make sure that the people working for you are excited to come to work every day. And because like eight hours a day, that's a, I mean, people spend more time at work, I feel like, than they do leisure time during the week. You know, you wake up, you get ready, you go to work, you come home, and then you got a couple hours of hanging out, go to bed.

And like, that's what it feels like many times. So what are you doing with your life if those eight hours, that big chunk of your day, Monday through Friday, or on our case at PacBiz, you know, we're 24 seven. So you could be working all kinds of shifts. Like if that's not a positive experience, that's a big chunk of your life. And, you know, I want to, I want to keep, I want to be happy. I want our staff to be happy. So that was kind of like my motivation was like, why not make it a great job? What can we do to make it a great job? And I can't be here. I live in Phoenix.

And so I wanted to give someone that responsibility, you that responsibility. Okay, what can you do to make this job fun? And how can we keep this, you know, really great place to work? And he killed it at that. So, yeah. So thanks for sharing that, Eric. I've been wondering, I'm curious what was behind that job position. But you know, a lot of companies, they wanted to have this, you know, company culture wanted to have this you know company culture and i think a lot company are doing that now than before right but i just want to share this experience that during the colbate i've attended this like workshop with the culture champions uh yeah and then one of the this

travel that they have with culture although they have have this, they want it to be like known for that as support and, and it's a struggle for them because luckily for you, it's coming from our, you know, the founder. So you get like all the support you need. so you get like all the support you need so you're saying the other call centers the people that have your role in other companies right they're not getting support to do all the things that they need to do to make culture amazing they're like you could have this job but you don't get any resources you don't get a budget you don't get people you don't have any ability to do much so like what are they left to do like potlucks the you know i don't know what well yeah um so it's hard for them to implement uh like what they wanted to have in culture so these companies would have like guidebooks like um because one way of sustaining

culture is you know the i always tell people that I'm a culture builder, you know, building this culture and it's just a tiny part of the success. It's, it has to be. It's more than a tiny part, it's a big part. Yeah, it is. Of course, it's a big part. But one of the really challenging part is the sustaining and that that's where support comes from the uh from the leadership or from the founder

otherwise it won't um it's so it takes a top-down approach you're not going to build culture by your agent saying we're going to make this an awesome place it takes leadership takes everyone bought in from top to bottom otherwise then it's just the agents, you know, like those staff leave and it's gone. But you need it from top to bottom. So yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. So yeah, it's, so it's one thing that made PAP is unique is it's coming from, from the CEO himself, uh, having this this mission like providing a good place to work yeah well thank you yeah um so you know we we talk about core values here probably not enough on the

on the podcast but at PACT is we have core values of family, respect, teamwork, compassion, and personal growth. And I almost picture your face every time I think of personal growth. I think of your face and Jake and Rusty and several other people that had been with me for many years and now are leading the company. But you've grown so much, like not only in your role, and you've stepped it up as we had five employees, 10. As we kept growing, you kept keeping up with it. But I don't know, I just got to see so much growth from you personally. Like I do remember you being pretty shy.

Like could you imagine if I would would ask to do something like this like 10 years ago it wouldn't have worked right it's a big no sorry so another chance yeah uh so how much did this job help you grow personally into like who you are today? Right. So I've grown from the role itself because I started very young, like at 20, 21 and I already have this big role in the company, company culture. I think I'm already called company culture director, like maybe at 23, when I shifted to like having this job full pack. So yeah, that's one thing because in the BPO, most of the employees or my colleagues,

they're senior already. They were in the BPO company for, before we used to just take three to five years with experience, right? And now they help very young. right and now they help very young and so uh my growth started with uh how do i um you know make myself credible at least yeah and it's it's been a long journey because those people that had stayed with the company from that time, they were already working together.

And I don't want to say that some of them like um like doubted um uh my ability with culture because first of all it's not as i said it's not a job that they it's offered anywhere given it in the uh the whole philippines but i'm glad to start that i have to see that they're starting to hire their culture roles these days. So they're ahead of that. And so, yeah, so adjusting and always, and also the interesting thing that this role provided me is meeting interesting people because on LinkedIn, they see that I'm the director of company culture and it's interesting for them. What is that?

So my growth comes from, most of my growth comes from that opportunity to meet these like individuals who are change makers is the one that they wanted to also be doing, you know, providing a good place to, to work. Yeah. That's true. You know, I think I've met some of the most interesting people. You've introduced me to some of the most interesting, interesting people here in Dumaguete that I'm like, how do you meet these people? And, you know, I'm so grateful that you have the opportunity to use this as a platform to be able to bring those people in

and bring them into your universe here because, yeah, like some of them, like, and it's not just interesting people, but you've actually helped bring really talented people to practice. I i think i don't know benzie our videographer who's had such a big impact these last couple years i think you played a big role in him coming here right or did you find him oh right right uh yeah but there's a lot of examples of a lot of the stuff like because you found or not even just people that are working at Pactas, but maybe it's a resource, like you brought in people like, well, Toastmasters. Let's talk about Toastmasters, right? Oh, okay.

That's a good example because you didn't go on your own and do that just yourself. What did you go do with that? Oh, yeah. It was during when we were just starting in the old building. And I just mentioned that to our general manager, Ms. Pippin, that this would be a good, like, I know this program and this would be a good like training for those who wanted to improve their communication skills. And so she searched it up and then yeah, then she shared it with training and then the training manager also know about it. And yeah we we started our our own which was bb speaks that the style yeah yeah and i think it helped a lot of staff gain more confidence you know we we've got people that have to talk to

clients and it could be pretty intimidating for them i know for me even for myself like in the early days of the call center like big companies would intimidate me. I think these days I could probably talk to, I could put anyone in this chair and I'll be fine, but that wasn't always the case. You know, I, it took, it took many years, over eight years of, of talking to so many business owners and getting comfortable knowing we're all just humans. Like there's no reason to be nervous or shy or, you know, like we're all just humans like there's no reason to be nervous or shy or you know like we're all just trying to do what we can in this world uh and they're not caring about the stuff that i'm thinking about in my head too but you've really you know helped help like i know there was a lot of uh employees that have went through pb speaks and have and i and i know many

like even some account managers too that they've gotten their confidence and they're better speakers to clients because of that so i mean and that's not even you could sit that under the culture umbrella but i mean that could be a responsibility for training that could be a responsibility for someone else but you took that and you brought it and you've made it a thing here at pactonsons because it wasn't even, I don't think they had, like the closest place where they actually have a chapter is Cebu, I believe, right? They don't have a chapter here in Luget,

but we made it happen here. Yeah, and interestingly, one of the speakers we had was from, it was because of Toastmasters that I that I was able to bring him here to speak about you know self I think she spoke about fear something those kind of topic it was because Toastmasters but you mentioned about like the bringing great talents to PacBiz because Dumaguete has been a hub for these talented, you know, artists. And yeah, that was true actually. I think we, because we were both a visionary and just to share this story about how I brought our videographer. And so we fired this videographer that we had before. And I was thinking that, oh, there's a lot of, more like, I've seen

those talented videographers before. And I've thought of this person, where is this person now? Or these people? And yeah, and that's how we we brought uh like benzy and then benzy brought his friends to to work at pap is the ripple effect yeah and then you weren't here i don't i mean you would be nowhere close to where we are today so So, uh, and just bringing just from that alone, we, I mean, we could keep talking and we'll continue to keep talking about the impact that you've made at PACTUS. But, uh, yeah, it's just really incredible how many different ways that you impact

the PACTUS that you probably don't really think about very often. Yeah. Because I usually think, yeah, I think there's so much like, because you know, the times are always changing and I think there's like pressure, like how do I keep up with the, with this changing times and be able to, for us to stay relevant, right, to the business or having our company culture still relevant to the younger generation. And I'm glad that we had like growth as one of our core. So thanks for, I'm glad that they made it to the top five. I had nothing to do with that.

We all voted on it together here at PACBiz. And it really was the staff and all the employees that came up with that. I'm only one vote. We had hundreds of other people trying to decide what are the top core values yeah personal growth and i i love that that's one of the values too because again like i said i think of you i think of jake i think of a lot of the leaders here that have stepped it up like they they said yes to me really early on we're a much smaller company and i if if i think if they knew what they were getting themselves into might not have said yes right away or they might have reconsidered and been like i don't know

but you guys did say yes and you know you guys have grown as the company has grown and now we're a lot more organized like today i mean the last two days we did strategic planning we are actually purposeful now and in that growth you know we talk about how we're going to get there in the next year three years ten years we have three month goals that were lined up to get to the year goal to get to the three-year goal that we weren't doing that before but now there's no surprises like we all know okay this is what we're trying back then we have no idea like there was no surprises. Like we all know, okay, this is what we're trying to do. Back then we have no idea. Like there was no, like, we're just like, we want to grow.

There was no, no plan necessarily behind it. It's just, and that's what happens when you're in a growing company. You don't really, you just keep going, keep moving ahead. Like what happens? How did we do that? So, well, uh, that i think will be it for episode part one and i still have some more questions to talk about with keisha here so don't leave yet don't run away we're going to come back and so in the next episode i'm going to talk to keisha here we're going to talk about how does she manage company culture at a company where no more employees were in the building and you couldn't

actually see each other. So I want to learn, I want to talk some more about that. And I've got a couple other questions. So, so come check us out on the next episode. We'll be back in two weeks with part two with Keisha, our director of company culture. So thanks again for being here, Keisha. Thank you also for having me. All right. We'll see you in two weeks.