So - yeah, we have a recording studio in our office

Hey!! October passed in a flash - but not without celebrating our MD’s birthday - Happy birthday Mark! Mark and John moseyed off to axe throwing and quad biking for their birthdays - I can feel the testosterone-fuelled vibrations from here. OOOOOOF.

So our engineers; The lovely Greg got hitched - and was very much missed whilst on honeymoon! We wish the newlyweds lots of luck and adventures together! (Remember to put the loo lid down Greg ; )

Martin had slightly less luck - in a fit of what can only be described as post-covid brain fog/SIP, he reported his van missing/stolen/joy ridden/vamoosed by visiting vultures/spirited away by anxious aliens/exported due to Brexit - only to discover he was looking in the wrong street… It might take him a while (a few millennia) to live that down. Bless.

Brandon our apprentice engineer is really settling in and blossoming - well done Brandon!!! You rock!

Our awesome office ladies, Sarah and Sasha, both passed their probations and received some (what can only be described as ‘interesting’) welcome gifts. This is what happens when you leave the boys in charge of gifting. Office banter at its best!!

John and the team have been rubbing shoulders with the soap stars and enjoying the novelty of working behind the scenes on set - previously only seen from the comfort of their sofas! Stardom!!! Not quite so fun, was working in one of Britain’s most haunted pubs, and being told not to take pictures, when there for an electrical inspection… spoooooky-spook.

Oh yeah and we are on the hunt for more amazing engineers, especially down South - so do poke us if you have the credentials, coupled with a playful personality and awesome customer service skills! We are a pretty cool bunch to work with. If we do say so ourselves. Obvs.

What else have we been up to? Ah yes, we renewed our Cyber Essentials Plus certificate. This is an essential credential for us, and one many of our customers ask for as their very first question when meeting us - we take it very seriously for that reason. We are really put through our paces during the accreditation, so are always chuffed and relieved to see the certificate!! Congrats team!

Sharon attended as a guest at a Cyber Security Round Table in London with the likes of NATO personnel, and then was a panellist speaker at the Digital Transformation Expo for CX (Customer Experience) In London Excel. It’s been amazing to meet people in real life again!! Sharon managed to squeeze into a red dress for the Women In Tech Awards dinner where she was a finalist, without needing firemen and their jaws of life. Result (or was it?!).

We also took the opportunity to have a deek at the Smart Buildings conference, Mark loving the AR and VR (augmented and virtual reality) solutions, and Pac-Man machines, and we can neither confirm or deny if we took a DeLorean for a spin!

And this - well this is massive - We built our very own Podcast Studio!!! Yes, yes and hell yes!!! (Well, Mark and Sharon did. John was, ahem, ‘busy’.) Watch our ‘Here To Tinpot Two’ podcast to see more about the build. It stands pride of place in our Wakefield office. It has blacked out windows, sound proofing, neon and looks full-fat awesome!!! We are open to renting it out to other production teams - just get in contact with us if you are interested. We have now finally come down from the paint and glue fumes and are chuffed to bits with how it has turned out. This has been Mark’s vision for some time, and it has been fantastic seeing our Podcast grow and succeed!! We’re on all the key podcast and music platforms (spotify, anchor, google, apple music, YouTube etc). Congratulations to Mark!!

Speaking of Mark - he presented at the Wates HMRC Dragons Den event - and completely smashed it. No change there - as he spends his days rocking presentations lately!!

What about the Customer Experience side of the business?!

The MetaB3e CX team have been busy in October, with three large ‘White Pumpkin’ events. A big shout out to our amazing Helen, who stepped out of her comfort zone and delivered amazingly at one of our events where we took 100 prison officers through grit, resilience and leadership training. Well done Helen - the picture of resilience! Delivering in a category B prison is a little different, especially without the comfort of our phones, laptops or slides - and with rather loud, heavy and secure doors - but delivered, we did!!

Sharon led a local leadership team in Marston’s hotel and restaurants, up in bonnie Scotland through an ‘eat your own dogfood’ immersive white pumpkin event. The team walked and lived the guest journey, from research, booking, arrival, check-in, dining, room, payment and after-stay, and have some great insights to now improve the guest experience and to inspire their wider teams.

Another event of note was the session with BSI - another shout out to the team there - what a joy to work with! We covered B2B customer interactions, behavioural insights for change, transformational approaches, resilience and leadership.

MetaB3e CX is ‘c-me’ (similar to Insights) accredited - which means we can now deliver behavioural and personality profiling sessions and coaching with the full profile reports. We did our personality profiles as a senior team and have found that we work so well together, as we have all the colour bases covered! (Well that’s lucky!). If you’d like your own report - shout Sharon and she’ll book you in!

October includes CX day - which is a huge day for us every year. We had several winners who won our ‘You’re CX’y and We Know It’ book - available on Amazon. We’re going to be including some of the chapters as tasters in our podcast soon - so keep a cheeky-deeky ear out for that!

And lastly - Team MetaB3e hit Go Ape in Wakefield. And did we hit it hard?!! There were tarzan noises. Yeehahs. Grunts. Whoops and ooofs. There was a certain apprentice who got himself stuck and had to be rescued. A COO who faced his fears on the abseil section, giving himself a very nice shiner on the way down. We all landed hard on our backsides on that one. A CXO who liked to launched herself headfirst off the ziplines, ropes etc and was black and blue for weeks. Martin our unofficial photographer was treated to some unflattering views from the ground. A cracking time was had by all - as our favourite terminator says - we’ll be back!!

Thank you for reading our updates - we love writing them - it always reminds us of what an awesome team we are, with such amazing supporters like you.

If you haven’t already tuned into our podcast - go look us up pronto!!

In a bit,

Team MetaB3e.