The BrightGauge Blog

When you have the ability to automate client reports, it becomes a true game-changer and a huge win for productivity. We've had customers tell us it takes 8-10 hours per week to put together client reports, but with BrightGauge you can create, schedule, and send reports in just a few clicks. That means, you get 8-10 hours of time back to spend on other revenue-generating tasks. Yay! In the above tutorial video, we'll take you through an in-depth guide of the steps you need to take to create and send client reports in BrightGauge. Part of the process is to set up your client mappings, which you can review in this video. Once you set up your report templates, they'll automatically go out on the date and time you choose. A real set-it-and-forget-it situation that will make a positive impact on your client relationships. If you've got questions at any time, please feel free to reach out to our support team.

RMON Networks, Inc. got its start in 2002, shortly after founder Tim Howard was laid off following the events of September 11th. In a time of uncertainty, Tim jumped on the opportunity to realize his dream of starting his own business. Armed with a background in IT and finance, Tim started New Hampshire-based RMON Networks with a focus on securing his client’s networks, as security became a big issue after September 11th. From the start, Tim wanted to work with clients who placed a high value on technology expertise. 17 years later, that still rings true, and RMON has a mission to deliver unique solutions to their customers. To help them run an efficient organization, RMON Networks recently added BrightGauge to their arsenal. So far, it’s been an eye-opening experience. We spoke with Tim to learn more. How RMON has grown over the years A lot has changed in the technology industry in 17 years. Tim recognizes that he missed the boat with some advancements, but he jumped on one in particular that has made a huge impact on RMON. “We embraced the cloud,” says Tim. “I was at a Microsoft Small Businesses meeting and someone presented about their hosted offering. If there were 50 people there, 49 passed on it. I was the only person willing to try it.” That decision was a smart move. After selling the Microsoft cloud solution to enough clients, RMON was eligible to be part of the Microsoft Cloud Champion Partners Program, where Microsoft sent leads to RMON on a regular basis. Once that happened, RMON started to grow significantly, enough to hire new staff and move to larger offices. In addition to the push from Microsoft, Tim believes that the RMON approach to customer service has helped differentiate them from competitors over the years. “I always tell my staff to be honest. You’ll always remember what you told someone if you tell the truth,” says Tim. “If we’re recommending a solution, you can come to our office and rest assured that we’re using that solution ourselves. We put our money where our mouth is. We’re true to our customers and to ourselves.” Becoming a BrightGauge customer As a Continuum and Autotask user, Tim and RMON attended the Continuum Navigate Conference in late 2018, in search of a better way to look at real-time data. After talking to BrightGauge, they felt it was the right tool to help them get a better handle on the dispersed data they had within their organization. And right off the bat, BrightGauge was eye-opening. “It revealed to me that I had dirty data,” says Tim. “I had stale data around our customers and our configuration items. We had processes that weren’t being adhered to or not clearly defined. BrightGauge gave us the opportunity to really take a look at ourselves again and redefine the way we approached our day-to-day.” When it came to Autotask specifically, Tim realized that he wasn’t inputting data into Autotask in the most efficient way. Opportunities were not being put together correctly, as notes were being left out and contracts were expiring without anyone being alerted. With BrightGauge, Tim and his team can create gauges and notifications around opportunities and contracts so all the right people can come together and plan ahead. It’s allowed RMON to get a lot more proactive instead of reactive. Future BrightGauge uses The RMON Networks team has made great use of gauges, dashboards, and reports, giving them high visibility into their important data and driving them to run a more efficient business. Next up, they want to place a focus on the goals component. “We are going to set goals not only as an organization, but we’ll also have measurable individual goals,” says Tim. “By being measured, the team will be able to see their own stats versus their peers. And healthy competition is a good thing.” We agree! Tim and his executive team plan to roll goals out as soon as possible, sitting down with each member on the RMON Networks team, regardless of their position. What BrightGauge has helped RMON Networks accomplish When it comes to the great communications struggle, Tim leaves us with a final thought: “At the end of the day, I want better visibility into our company and I also want the icing on the cake: better communications with our client. Having the ability to send Continuum executive reports or Autotask ticket reports and giving our clients information that matters to them changes everything. We’re communicating better and building stronger relationships, and I know it’s because of BrightGauge.” Thank you, Tim and RMON Networks for being part of the BrightGauge family!

When you have a lot of gauges that you are frequently using, it's easy to forget which dashboards those gauges appear on. No worries. We have a really simple tip to help you keep track of your gauge usage - no memorization required. Watch this quick video to learn how to find the dashboards your gauges are on. By the way, are you feeling gauge overload? Try some Spring Cleaning if you will. Here are some tips for cleaning up your BrightGauge. If you've got questions at any time, feel free to reach out to our support team!

Have you gotten use out of Snapshot gauges* yet? We like to think of it as our data warehousing lite solution. Essentially, Snapshots capture a specific data point on a cadence you set (daily, weekly, or monthly) and plot that point onto a chart. Over time, it helps you identify historical trends that could have a big impact on your business decisions. We see Snapshots being used for things like Tickets per Endpoint or End of Day Ticket Count, for example. This quick video shows you how to set up Snapshots in just a few clicks. If you've got questions at any time, please feel free to reach out to our support team! *Please note: this feature is available to Enterprise Plan users only.

‘Average’ – it’s a word that’s come to symbolize something bland, boring, or even sub-par. We are all taught to excel and be better than average. Humans love extremes, including in online reviews. Why? Well the terrible reviews are insightful, and often amusing, while the great reviews warm your heart. But there's an entire middle ground that's being forgotten - the people who leave average ratings, rather 'meh' smileys and more. This silent majority is being ignored - and that's pretty dangerous. Because while it seems like a bunch of relatively average data, there are insights here to be discovered and leveraged. Ultimately, if we accept that all feedback is useful, then we have to treat all of this middle-ground feedback with the same respect. But how do you do that? What lessons can be learned? And why are customer satisfaction surveys, even with lots of average ratings, still incredibly useful to your business? It pays to be transparent Customers place a really high value on transparency. They like to be kept in the loop and know what to expect. Transparency breeds trust, which leads to loyalty and repeat customers. The stats prove it too - 77% of customers would recommend a business to a friend based on their positive experience. Businesses that don’t fully acknowledge or value each of their client’s voices are not being fully transparent, as there’s insight to be gained and importance in every customer’s opinion. Whether it’s understanding that a necessary change in processes is due, or an indication of something that’s working and needs to keep going, reviews provide a perfect opportunity to get close to customers and address their pain points. Customers simply want good, open service - research shows 66% of consumers who switched brands did so because of poor service. So when taken as constructive criticism, all reviews can ultimately help a business become better and more successful. Plus, businesses that place a big emphasis on customer service and make great efforts to gain their client’s feedback prove that they prioritize their customer’s needs. Asking for a customer’s review isn’t an annoying business practice. Quite the opposite - asking for feedback says, “are we doing a good job of meeting your needs? What can we be doing better? How can we help you get what you need more efficiently?” At the end of the day, emphasizing customer reviews shows that you are authentic and that you care, and people ultimately want businesses like that in their corner. After all, people don’t buy products, they buy better customer experiences. Your best offense and defense Providing thorough customer service gives you the unique opportunity to be in the frontlines, so to speak. It’s not possible to reach every single person that comes into contact with your product or service, but it’s worth making an effort to reach as many as possible and speak directly to them. Customer support is both your best offense and your best defense: it tells you what areas need improvement, how your customers are using your product, and what is working well. Without insights like these, you’re essentially just making a product for yourself instead of understanding what you could be doing to make a difference in your customer’s lives. When you make yourself available to customers, it’s a chance to address their concerns (or praises) directly instead of letting their feedback get lost in the cloud. You’re able to provide a personal experience, get specific in your explanations, and understand your customer’s journey from their perspective. Pay attention to customer service comments Naturally, everyone gets a kick out of a really stellar review. As humans, it makes us feel validated and gives our ego a nice boost. Who doesn’t want to hear that they’re hitting it way out of the park? The problem with these stellar reviews is that they’re usually the exception, not the norm. While they should certainly be appreciated, they shouldn’t be the standard. The real gold and the real learnings lie in average reviews. And again, why does average have to be synonymous with bad? If you’re consistently providing average service, it means you’re doing okay. You’re not doing anything terrible and offensive, but you could stand to improve a bit. The comments in these average reviews can teach you a whole lot. Customers may say, “These guys are always consistent, but I wish they would X, Y, Z…” or “I give my experience 3 stars, but had they tweaked this one thing slightly, I would have easily given them 5 stars.” That kind of feedback is incredibly valuable and can literally tell you what you need to do to kick things up a notch. Don’t ignore average reviews just because they don’t warm your heart the way those exceptional ones do. Doing so can lead to huge missed opportunities. How to evaluate your customer experiences Understanding the value of each review is just the first step in the process. Mining for that data is equally important. You’re likely relying on a tool like SmileBack to help you gather your customer feedback, which is a good move because it’s smart to be methodical and accurate with information this important. But how do you keep track of all those survey responses and the insights they provide? Pairing SmileBack with BrightGauge has proven to be a valuable way to slice and dice CSAT data. BrightGauge dashboards show your CSAT data in real-time, as it’s happening. You gain visibility into your average scores, your number of negative or neutral or positive reactions, your reactions per technician on your team, and so on. With BrightGauge, you can set up audible and visible alerts if your scores fall below a specified number, so you can take course corrective action immediately. According to Zendesk research, 89% of support teams already use some kind of integration. High-performing companies use a third more on average. The lesson: get involved, have the ability to be proactive about your customer service, and be sharper in your customer experience. Conclusion In sum, the most important thing about customer feedback is that you place high value on every single piece of feedback you receive. Be deliberate about the way you digest these reviews. Looking at them from a constructive point of view will help you run a better business and will help you give your customers what they want. Happy customers who feel like they are being heard - even if what they are saying is considered ‘average’ - are more likely to stick with you. So, it really pays to pay attention. For more on CSAT feedback that'll get you results, download our whitepaper, 'Customer Satisfaction Surveys That Work'. Ashley Scrace Wendel is the Marketing Manager at SmileBack. Now based in Berlin, Germany, Ashley is a comms pro, with experience from startups and international brands across Europe. If he’s not helping SmileBack with their communication efforts, he’s playing the guitar, singing, podcasting, or enjoying a new travel destination. Connect with Ashley on LinkedIn.

There are a handful of business strategies that serve to motivate and align employees in a powerful, palpable way. Our favorite: setting and tracking goals. Goal-setting works because it gives employees a clearly defined target to work towards and removes any ambiguity around what they “should” be doing. Plus, when goals are made visible to an entire company, it drives team members to feel accountable about meeting those goals because, let’s face it, everyone likes to look good in front of their peers. The tricky part about goals is knowing where to begin. How often should goals be set? What should goals be centered around? What if team members miss their goals? All valid questions without black and white answers. It really depends on you. However, we know how much it helps to have examples as a reference. Ahead, we’ll cover the actual goals we’re tracking this quarter, plus tips for setting your own. This is how we do it For us, setting and tracking goals on a quarterly basis works really well. Focusing on a few goals each quarter helps us make steady progress towards the bigger picture. The idea is that every year is treated like a puzzle we are trying to complete. Quarterly goals make up the small pieces that eventually pull the entire puzzle together. So, while we focus on small wins throughout the year, those goals ultimately help us achieve something grander. In addition, we set company goals and departmental goals. Each person in each department gets assigned 3-4 goals to be accountable for. And, you guessed it, they all tie back to our company goals. Not surprisingly, we use BrightGauge to track our goals. We do this for several reasons, including: You can power goals through gauges you’re already tracking It keeps everybody’s goals organized in one, accessible place Week-to-week, we can add context to our goals to explain why we hit or missed our target that week In the goals sheet, green boxes signal weeks where you’re on track, while red boxes mean you were off-track that week; this makes it so easy to glance and quickly understand where there may be problems (i.e., someone’s goal is too challenging/unrealistic or way too easy) We get weekly email reminders to check into our goals, so it’s easy to stay on track We also get weekly email summaries of everybody’s goal progress, so we can understand what our peers have been working on and accomplishing If goals are unorganized or hard to stay on top of, team members will fail to see the value of setting them. So, it’s quite important to make the process of goal-tracking simple, because we’re already working hard to improve and meet our objectives. This is what we’re tracking Naturally, our goals change from quarter-to-quarter, but they are always about improving and advancing our company’s (and our individual) development. We each have a mixture of process and outcome goals. The best way to understand the difference is an outcome goal is something like, “I want to lose 10 pounds this quarter”, while a process goal is, “I want to walk 50,000 steps each week”. Each process helps you meet the outcome. Here are some actual goals we are currently tracking this quarter: Company Goals Hire a new Sales Development Rep Increase the number of Qualified Inbound Leads Launch Embeddable Gauges (yay, we met that one already!) Go live with new integrations (we recently released Basecamp) Sales Goals Alanna: More than 150 dials per week Allison: at least 55% of demos won per week Felipe: schedule more than 50 demos this quarter Support Goals Danny: 1 ticket or less escalated per week Kristian: Average response time at or below 30 minutes per week Michael: Solve more than 1,500 tickets this quarter Hector: Less than 5 negative CSAT reactions this quarter Marketing Goals Jack: Launch 3 new features pages on our site Nat: Update 3 or more marketing resources Susan: Publish 10 videos on our blog In need of more inspiration? Check out 50 goal ideas for every member on your team. What if we miss our goals? It should be a realistic expectation that not every goal that is set will be reached. If that were the case, it would be more than likely that some pretty unchallenging goals were being set. Goals should motivate us to strive, exit our comfort zones, improve upon ourselves, and learn something new. As long as we’re growing, we’re being successful. If missing goals automatically classified us as failures, we’d be hard-pressed to ever strive for something seemingly out of our reach, which means we’d be pretty stagnant. Of course, repeatedly missing every goal can be a problem, but it’s important to put context around why a goal was hit or missed. Was 70% of the goal achieved? That’s awesome! Sounds like a lot of progress was made. Did a new company goal get prioritized? If so, it makes sense that one’s focus had to shift. Reviewing goals really needs to be done on a case-by-case basis, but we’re pretty strong believers in not tying performance reviews to goal outcomes. By the way, at BrightGauge, we meet as a team at the end of each quarter to talk about our goal progress, but we only have formal reviews once a year. Try setting your own goals Hopefully, by sharing what goals we’re currently tracking, we’ve sparked some interest in establishing a goal-setting strategy of your own. If you’re a BrightGauge user, it’s really easy to get going. Here’s a video that shows you how to set up goals. Want to learn more? We’ll be happy to take you through a live demo of BrightGauge. Just contact us today!

We get asked a lot about the best way to keep track of past due schedules. When running a service desk, it can get a little tricky to see if your resources are working on/completing a project when they say they will (aka, on schedule). Of course, this is important data to know as it helps you assess how you're doing with your SLAs. With BrightGauge, you can easily track this KPI by building a really simple gauge that returns the number of open schedules that are past due. It only takes a few minutes to set up and we show you just how to do it in this video. If you've got any questions at any time, please feel free to check out our knowledge base or submit a support ticket.

We’re so excited to announce that we now offer Basecamp as an integration for our customers! Basecamp is currently live and available to connect with. We are personal users of Basecamp here at BrightGauge. We find that it’s a really efficient way to track and manage projects, see what everyone’s working on, know who is responsible for which tasks, and keep all important communications in one central place. The positive impact has been awesome, decreasing our number of meetings and practically eliminating the need for email (yay!). When you integrate BrightGauge + Basecamp, you’ll get visibility and details about your Basecamp activity, so you can see what your team’s been working on and how much has been accomplished at any given time. How to connect to Basecamp If you’re a Basecamp user and want to start viewing your stats on BrightGauge dashboards, you’ll be up and running in just a few minutes. When you’re logged into BrightGauge and are on your overview page, click on the green ‘Add a new Datasource’ button. Find Basecamp under the ‘All’ or ‘Other’ category, click on it, and follow all the prompts. Within a few minutes, you should be good to go. If you need further instructions, check out our Basecamp support doc. Not yet a BrightGauge customer? Contact our sales team today and we’ll be glad to walk you through a live one-on-one demo. What do I get out of the box? We know how helpful it is to have access to your data as soon as possible, and you may not have time to build out custom gauges right off the bat. Instead, we’ll help you get started by providing pre-built gauges, dashboards, and reports with every datasource we offer. With Basecamp, you get 15 gauges, 1 dashboard, and 2 reports right out of the box. Gauges With your 15 default Basecamp gauges, you can easily keep track of all activities taking place within Basecamp. Get a look at comments on todos and projects, open and completed todos, project overview, total todos by assignee, overdue tasks, uncompleted todos, and more. Dashboards One default Basecamp dashboard will help you get an overview of all your Basecamp activity, but you can feel free to customize this dashboard to your preferences or build your own! The default dashboard will show todo stats (completed vs open vs uncompleted), a projects overview, and an open todos overview. Reports Custom reports are so great because they show a real sense of transparency between you and your team members, and transparency = trust. With Basecamp, we’ll give you two reports to get you started. Feel free to use these as a jumping off point to customize the reports the way you’d like. One report template gives you a monthly overview of your Basecamp activity, while the other one gives you a weekly summary. Anytime you’ve got a question about Basecamp, please submit a support request or contact us and we’ll be ready to help!

You've made it a point this year to start setting and tracking goals for you and your team members. That's awesome! Goal-setting is a really effective way to get everyone on your team on the same page and working towards success together. With BrightGauge Goals, it's really simple to set up trackable goals in the same tool you're already using to get your data insights. You can even power your goals from existing gauges. For example, you may assign one of your techs a goal to keep their response time at or below 30 minutes this quarter. You can set up this goal to automatically pull in data from your Average Response Time gauge week-over-week. The video above gives a comprehensive overview of our goal-setting process. A few important things to note: Make sure your gauge-powered goals are filtered for the current week, otherwise the data that is captured each week won't be accurate. Your team members will be emailed each week reminding them to check in to their goal and mark whether they were on- or off-track and add context around why they might be missing their target this week. This keeps everyone accountable to their actions and responsibilities. Each week, every team member will receive a goal summary email, detailing the whole team's progress. This kind of visibility is a powerful way to drive everyone together and build trust amongst one another. After watching this video, you should be able to get your goal list started. But, if you've got questions at any time, please feel free to reach out to our support team and we'll be happy to lend a hand! Want to see how other BrightGauge customers are using goals? Watch our customer showcase webinar, where BrightGauge user Justin Kelley shares how he has set up goal lists for his entire team.

It’s hard to master many things well. Focus on one area, and you’re bound to get it right. This rings especially true for the software you use to help run your business. Like many, you probably often find yourself thinking, “I want one piece of software to master all of my business needs: a PSA, RMM, CSAT, finance, security, and project management tool with the power of business intelligence and reporting to boost.” It’s near impossible to get all of this right in one platform though. Luckily, we’re all getting better at talking to each other, focusing on integrations and overlapping more seamlessly. Announcing BrightGauge public gauges! With public gauges you can take your KPIs on the road, placing them on your website, support desk, in your client portals; anywhere and everywhere. How it works Through unlimited viewer licenses, you already can share reports, dashboards, and goal lists with team members and customers. Now, use public gauges to put your target or great work front and center for your clients and potential partners. Available to all BrightGauge Enterprise level accounts, public gauges allow you to take any gauge, mark it as publicly viewable, and insert it on a webpage with a short snippet of code. There are only a couple of differences between the public version and the gauge that lives in your BrightGauge account: you’re not able to access filters and the drilldown. If you’d like to share more granular level information, consider sending a report or sharing a dashboard. A big benefit to public gauges too: no more auto-logout issues! This is key for those who use admin or viewer accounts to share tv displayed dashboards. Important things to note when setting up your public gauge Sync times. Public gauge dataset syncing works akin to gauges on a dashboard. If the gauge is not used anywhere (ie, not on active dashboard or scheduled report) then the datasets will not sync. Public Gauges will fetch for newly available/updated data every minute. As soon as new data is available, it will be fetched at the next minute interval. Sizing constraints. The height and width of the public gauges are automatically set to 300px by 400px. Keep this ratio in mind when attempting to size up or down. Disabled public gauges. If you disable an embedded gauge it'll show an error where it's embedded. Ways to set up your public gauge There are many ways to display your embeddable gauge. Here are a few we’ve heard about from customers: AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME Share your stellar response times and CSAT score on your support page or website. Add your top client gauges into their client portal. Put your main KPI front and center on your ConnectWise, IT Glue, and other datasource portals. If you’re already receiving great client feedback, share it on your testimonials page. Are you interested in getting set up with public gauges? Reach out to sales@brightgauge.com for help.