The BrightGauge Blog

During our annual planning session we spent a good hour on our leadership scorecard. Below I wanted to share my thoughts about the process and the scorecards feature in general. Something is better than nothing BrightGauge scorecards are great for weekly tracking of KPIs to keep your business in line with your goals. Yes, we did tie our scorecards to the EOS model but you don’t have to follow EOS to leverage the value. Here’s how you get started: pick 7 KPIs that tell the story of your IT Services firm (MSP) each week and pick a weekly target for each one. Something like: Cash Balance > 100K Response Time <30 Sales Quotes Delivered > 5 Collections > 50K CSAT > 98% Kill Rate > 100% Projects Currently Open > 5 Assign each one of these an owner who is on your leadership team or who truly owns each one of these. Then during your weekly meetings with that same group (which I’m sure you have them), go around the room and make sure everyone has their number checked in. That’s it. That’s how we got started and we let it evolve from there. You can always adjust targets, change KPIs, or add some later, but for now you just want to get started. For more in depth Best Practices on using data to drive growth, watch this webinar. Cadence & Accountability Scorecards are useless without a cadence. You have to be meeting and checking in with them weekly. This is not a passive feature where you sit back and look at the numbers. This is an active engagement of committing as a team that the numbers are accurate and that you are holding yourselves accountable for making an impact on these numbers. MSPs are huge data nerds, and we love it, but this is about looking into each others eyes and knowing each of your team members is owning their numbers. Especially our Connectwise customers, that datasource is so data rich but we all need to realize it's more than just the data that matters, it's how you use it and who’s accountable for the right numbers. We have lots to do with Scorecards We’re going to keep the beta tag on so you feel comfortable giving feedback (its amazing how that tag works). Scorecards mean different things to our IT Services customers (MSPs) and we understand that so don’t think you’re crazy! Feedback like Engineer Scorecards, Benchmarking, Sales Scorecards have all been floated to us and we’re working on some cool stuff based on that feedback. So please keep sending ideas our way. In fact, just in our annual offsite my brother Eric identified about 5 features that we want ourselves. 😃 Learn more about the tactics that have helped drive growth at BrightGauge, for our customers, and at our MSP:

In the last few years cloud popularity has been on the rise, but we find that plenty of people in the MSP industry still have questions have the trend. So we asked Jonathan Lieberman, co-Founder & CEO of Itopia cloud workspace to join us for a conversation about what’s really going on in the world of cloud software. How far into the cloud trend are we now? What are the common cloud security concerns? What signs should MSPs look for to confirm that it’s time to transition to the cloud? Join us for all the cloud insights you need to know. Trends in the Cloud: Episode Highlights Jonathan’s introduction and background (0:46) What are the contributing factors to rapid growth? Why are cloud solutions so popular now? (3:00) A typical day: where Jonathan spends his time as an Executive of a business growing at 140% (4:37) Current high level trends in the cloud (6:10) People seem to be very comfortable with moving email to the cloud, but overall, how far along in the cloud movement are most businesses? (8:07) Signals an MSP should look for when it comes to introducing the cloud (10:05) How Itopia addresses concerns about security in the cloud (11:46) The benefits of cloud for MSPs (13:06) A closer look at the types of MSPs doing business with Itopia (16:09) The onboarding and certification process with Itopia (19:40) Making the decision to focus on the software side of business (21:20) Advice for MSPs thinking about the cloud (22:35) Q&A: best business book recommendation, favorite personal improvement resource, how to reach Jonathan (24:54) Best business book as referenced in the episode: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.

This is a question that comes up every so often, and many times from frustrated customers that want to speak with our team NOW. I put together this brief video to help address the question. The short answer is no we do not have a phone number where you can call our support team. It’s not that we don’t like to talk on the phone with customers, in fact it's the opposite because we spend a lot of time on the phone with customers. The reality is we don’t have the infrastructure to set up a call center that is standing by waiting for your call to come in. The moment we introduce a call center then we need to have it properly staffed so there are no long wait times and with a team that size, supporting customers spread across 5 continents in 15 different time zones, it becomes cost prohibitive. So no, you can’t call our support team right now BUT there are easier ways to get in touch. How to Get in Touch with BrightGauge Support The easiest and most popular way our customers reach out to us is by emailing support@brightgauge.com which automatically opens up a ticket within our system for our team to triage. The beauty of using email is that you can enter as much detail as possible (links, screenshots, etc) which makes our turnaround time significantly faster. What About Response Times? We work very hard to make sure when our customers do reach out with a question we are quick to respond. As a matter of fact I’m very proud to say that our response time is under 10 minutes and our average resolution time is 12 to 13 hours. Considering the scope of issues we deal with from simple password resets to bug fixes that take days/weeks these numbers are pretty impressive. And if you don’t believe me, based on Zendesk which is our help desk system, the average B2B software provider responds within 24 hours. 24 hours for a response...that’s just CRAZY. Give our Support Team a Shot The next time you have a question about BrightGauge reach out to our Customer Success Team and watch how quickly and efficiently they handle your request. Our team is here waiting to help you! Still skeptical about how it all works? Learn more about how our team leverages videos in our support process to help resolve your problems in the most efficient way possible.

If there's one thing that everyone knows about business metrics, it has to be this often-quoted advice: “what you measure, you will improve.” While true, there are some metrics that just aren’t worth measuring. A good business owner knows how to choose and measure the metrics that will improve core aspects of his or her business. Harvest time tracking and invoicing software contains several such metrics. Let's take a look at some of the most useful Harvest metrics: 6 Harvest Metrics you Need to Monitor Open Projects The metric provides a quick look at your current workload. It’s important to track the number of open projects because it will allow you to more efficiently manage your team and projects. Hours by Task MTD In essence, this gauge tracks where your team is spending time. This metric is often overlooked, but it’s so powerful when you’re looking to improve team efficiency. Without much effort on your part, you can identify the categories your team spends too much time on. Plus, if you filter by Technician you can identify training opportunities and even the ideal task fit for an employee. Amount Uninvoiced Monitoring the amount of hours that haven’t been invoiced yet will help you identify an issue that could affect monthly income. You’ll want to ensure all your hours are being invoiced and paid for. Stale Projects Stale Projects are typically projects in which hours have not been entered for 7 days or more. It is important to identify these and figure out why they are stale and what needs to be done to get them moving again. Projects Over Budget Projects that have required more hours than originally budgeted for should be a major red flag. You’ll want to monitor this in real-time to identify any potential issues and remedy them as fast as possible. Hours vs Budget This gauge is primarily used to track progress on your currently open projects, but can also be used to highlight when you’re over budget on a particular project. The Easiest Way to Track Harvest Metrics BrightGauge brings best practices to our customers with our dashboard templates. Each template is made by our Data Team to give you the best possible look into your business. Learn more about Harvest here.

Today we are excited to share our latest integration partner, Xero: Xero is one of the leading cloud-based accounting software solutions that connects people with the right numbers anytime, anywhere, on any device. And with our new integration you can take that information to the next level by having all of your powerful Xero data published directly into BrightGauge. How Our Customers Are Using Xero + BrightGauge To Drive Their Business Publishing your financial KPIs to any of your BrightGauge dashboards allows you to introduce the financial component into your team’s decision making process. Having these metrics at your fingertips instead of having to toggle back and forth with another system is a huge time saver. Sharing your KPIs via our Internal Reporting helps empower your team with the information they need to get their job done. For those that share the responsibility of collections, you can now see in one quick snapshot who the top offenders are and who you need to follow up with: By leveraging our Scorecard feature you can bring all your financial metrics into one screenshot and more easily hold your team accountable for their performance. Below you can see a customer tracking several financial KPIs so they can see any trends over time: Sample Gauges from Xero Trailing Performance - Quickly and easily track how your company has been performing over the prior month, quarter or year. This provides important insights into where your company is trending and heading going forward. Service Gross Margin - We are all in the services business and therefore people are our biggest line item on our financial statements. Understanding how efficiently they are performing can dramatically improve your company’s profitability. In a quick glance you can see a trend of how your team is performing. What Our Customers are Saying: "With the BrightGauge and Xero integration, we get a snapshot of our business performance in an instant. From the daily reports to real-time dashboards, it has been quick from the get-go and the support has been fantastic. We should have done this a long time ago!" - James Munro, Partner | GCITS Technology To learn more about how Xero and BrightGauge can help drive your business forward please visit:

“Data won’t give you all the answers, but it will help you ask better questions” explains Todd Kane, President of Evolved Management Consulting. For MSPs, Todd stresses the point that being data driven always starts with KPIs. From there, MSPs must ensure that they have an execution plan because numbers are irrelevant for those who don’t know how the numbers apply to their business and how to close the gap between starting point and goal. In his conversation with us, Todd shares 5 KPIs to measure MSP success, leadership insights, the top mistakes that MSPs make, and more. Data Won't Give You All the Answers: Episode Highlights Todd’s introduction and background (0:44) The pivot points (size and scope) when companies need consulting (3:39) Typical challenges these companies face (5:49) Current trends in the IT market: security and ransomware, hybrid architecture between on-prem and cloud-based infrastructure, and more (9:24) How do you help MSPs evolve from charging per device/user? (11:27) Best in class benchmarks for MSPs (13:08) Mistakes that MSPs are making: data hygiene, management methodology (15:45) 5 KPIs to measure your success and why they are important: Tickets per Seat, SLA Achievement, Utilization, NRR, and EBITDA (17:59) Data won’t give you the answer, but it will help you ask better questions: how do you help MSPs understand that it all starts with the right data in the right spot and make that transition? (24:53) How do you help clients understand the importance and benefits of SLAs? (26:46) “Leadership becomes a bottleneck in rapid growth”, the 2-pizza rule, and advice on management (31:14) Rapid-fire Q&A: best business book, favorite resource for personal improvement, parting advice, and how to reach Todd (35:50) Books as referenced in the episode: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t, Jim Collins The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, Peter Drucker Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, Simon Sinek Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, Gino Wickman Podcasts as referenced in the episode: MSP Radio by Continuum, Smart People Podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, Radiolab, Evolved Radio Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.

Want to skyrocket your MSP’s growth and success? This list of 59 metrics will help you choose the data to do so: Before we get started... An Important Note: Just because we’ve listed 59 metrics in this list, doesn’t mean that you should monitor all of these metrics at once. Monitoring all 59 metrics at one time is guaranteed to result in analysis paralysis. Instead, follow the rule of 3’s by assigning 3 metrics to each person in your leadership/management team. You can learn more about using the rule of 3’s when choosing metrics in this prior blog post. Prefer to download the list? Get all the metrics from this post, plus 20 extras, for free! With that said, let’s get started... Financial Metrics for MSPs Cash On Hand Keeping track of your cash flow will help you to stay out of financial trouble. Months of Cash Another way of looking at cash on hand, months of cash goes a step further by letting you know how long that cash will last you. Accounts Receivable Monitoring your receivables will allow you to see how much money is awaiting customer payment, which tells you how much money should be coming in during the next 30 days, and also alerts you as to which clients are not paying on time. Profit A no-brainer due to the popularity of the P&L statement, tracking your profit will enable you to see how well your business has performed and create a baseline for future data. Just note that this isn’t a real-time metric and only provides a look at the past performance of your business. Unpaid Invoices Tracking unpaid invoices allows you quickly and easily identify which client’s services need to paused or canceled. Overhead Your operating costs will provide insight into both how much revenue you need to bring in and whether you are operating with too little margins. Labor Costs Breaking overhead down a little, your labor costs will help to identify whether you are hiring more personnel than you can afford. Debt/Asset Ratio The Debt/Asset Ratio provides information on your business’s financial leverage. Utilization Utilization measures the actual revenue earned by assets and helps you identify if you could be operating more efficiently. Client Concentration More important for small to medium sized MSPs, client concentration is a powerful measurement that identifies the percent of profit that each client is responsible for. Revenue By Category Breaking down revenue by category will allow you to identify whether you need to diversify your sources of revenue or not. Service Gross Margin Services are a great business, but if you’re not monitoring your profit margin you could be making a big mistake! This allows you to ensure your business is performing as efficiently and successfully as possible. Service Team W2 Ratio Similar to service gross margin, this metric allows you to ensure your business is operating at peak efficiency and profitability. EBITDA Margin Standing for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, EBITDA margin is a measure of your company’s profitability and financial health. Total Customers Monitoring the number of total customers will give you a quick look at your MSPs health by allowing you to check for growth or loss. Customer Lifetime Value Customer lifetime value will help you know when to look at raising your rates and how and when you should look to increase your total customers. Sales Expense as a % of Revenue Your sales expenses as a percentage of revenue will help to identify how efficient your sales and marketing processes are and when to allocate more or less funds to sales and/or marketing. Sales and Marketing Metrics for MSPs Sales Growth Sales growth is one of the easiest ways to check if your business is growing, making it a popular metric for businesses to track. Sales Opportunities Tracking your sales opportunities will allow you to predict the number of new customers that will come in and ensure that you’ve got enough potential customers for your sales reps to reach out to. Quote to Close Your quote to close ratio is the average number of quotes that are sent before one is closed. It will help you identify potential issues with your quote, whether that’s price, timing, or some other factor. Age of Opportunity Looking at the age of each opportunity will allow you to recognize patterns for identifying when the ideal time to prioritize an opportunity is, increasing your close rate. Response Time Monitoring the response time of your sales reps will help you to ensure your sales cadence is being followed and doesn’t need to be changed or improved upon. Total Pipeline Dollars Tracking the number of dollars in the pipeline can help you predict how much revenue will come in the next month. Website Visitors While often considered a vanity metric, your website visitors can provide great value. For example, when combined with your average conversion rate you can use it to predict how many leads will be generated in the coming months. Bounce Rate Your bounce rate will let you know if the people visiting your site are finding what they were looking for or if they are getting frustrated and exiting your site. This is particularly important for SEO and PPC ads. Leads from Website The number of leads coming from your website will help to see its effectiveness in driving new customers to your MSP. Unique Blog Page Views Many MSPs have now begun to blog in order to offer increased value to their clients and help capture new leads. Monitoring the number of people who visit your blog will help you see the worth of this channel. Newsletter Views & Clicks If you send an email newsletter to your customers and/or a subscriber list, you can identify how much value it’s providing your company by analyzing how many people are viewing and clicking on your emails. Social Media Mentions Having a presence on social media is necessary today, and it’s crucial for a business to monitor their engagement on social media by tracking social media mentions. Market Growth Rate Monitoring market growth rate will allow you to predict whether there will be more customers for you to pursue or whether the market has reached its peak and it’s time to pivot towards a new customer base. Market Share Tracking your market share will also help to let you know when it’s time to move towards a new customer base or to keep pursuing customers in your current market. Brand Equity The measure of the value of your brand (not the company’s equity) is difficult to track but necessary for successful decision making. Imagine if the Ford Mustang was changed to be the Ford Fastback! The car’s sales would likely plummet. Track your brand equity to help drive brand growth and make better decisions. Cost per Lead Cost per lead helps you to establish which platforms are viable and whether you need to be charging your customers more for your services. Service Metrics for MSPs Technician Utilization Technician utilization is an often overlooked metric, but it can directly contribute to your business’s bottom line! Monitoring it will help to ensure that your service team is operating as efficiently as possible. SLA Adherence Complying with your SLAs is incredibly important for MSPs, and there’s no way to ensure you are doing so without measuring your SLA adherence! Customer Satisfaction Customer Satisfaction (also abbreviated as CSAT) is a measure of how satisfied a customer was with their experience. Monitoring CSAT scores will let you identify how happy your service team is leaving your customers. Tickets Opened Today Monitoring this metric will provide a quick look at what’s coming in and help you identify spikes in real time. Tickets Closed Today Looking at your tickets closed today will give you an idea of whether your team is ahead or falling behind in real time. Assigned Tickets by Technician Assigned tickets by technician will allow you to identify which technicians are your top performers and who could use a little coaching/training. In Progress Tickets Tickets that are in progress will allow you to see if your technicians are falling behind or keeping up with their tickets. Resolved Tickets Tracking the number of resolved tickets will allow you to see if your team is performing at the necessary levels to provide good customer service. Unassigned Tickets Many MSPs triage their tickets and assign them to technicians based on severity and topic. If your tickets are not being assigned fast enough you may need to consider changing your triage process. Customer Responded Tickets Another great metric to be tracking is the number of tickets in which a customer has responded but hasn’t yet received a response from your team. This allows you to identify whether your team is responding fast enough to tickets. Waiting on Customer Tickets Tracking the number of tickets that are waiting for a response from your customer will allow you to identify a potential issue before it happens. You may need to follow up more often or explore different methods of communication with your customer. Tickets Past Due Tickets past due will help you to ensure you are not falling behind on your ticket load. Tickets Opened By Client If you’re familiar with the Pareto Principle, you’ll know that 20% of your clients will account for 80% of your tickets. Monitoring tickets open by client will allow you to identify those clients and either charge them more, notify them so they can better train their employees, or fire them as a client. Tickets Open by Type By monitoring your tickets open by type, you can identify which category of tickets are responsible for the most open tickets and which are taking your team longest to resolve. Stale Tickets Sometimes a ticket goes without an update for an extended period of time. Normally, these tickets are lost, but by monitoring the number of stale tickets you can ensure all tickets are being followed up on in a timely manner. Average Time to Response Responsiveness is one of the key factors in determining whether a customer churns or becomes a promoter of your business. Tracking your average time to response will help you monitor and improve your responsiveness. Average Time to Acknowledgment Average time to acknowledgment will help you monitor whether you are hitting your SLAs or not. Average Time to Resolution Plan This is another metric to help track whether you’re reaching your SLAs. Average Time to Resolution Yet another metric for monitoring SLAs. Tickets Opened and Closed in the Last 14 Days Tracking the amount of tickets that have been opened and closed in the last 2 weeks will help you identify short term trends and see if your team is handling the number of tickets or is falling behind. Top Ticket Closers for the Week Leaderboards used to identify the reps who are closing the most support tickets will help to provide a little healthy competition between your team members. Kill Rate Identifying whether your team is closing more tickets than are being opened is crucial to ensure you’re not falling behind. HR Metrics for MSPs Revenue per Employee A powerful, but often overlooked metric, Revenue per Employee allows you to gauge how efficiently your company is using its employees. Employee Churn Rate Monitoring your employee churn rate can help you make better hiring decisions and highlight areas where you can improve your company’s culture. Employee Satisfaction Employee Satisfaction helps you understand how happy your employees are and by doing so will allow you to identify any potential problems. Employee Engagement Measuring employee engagement will allow you to identify how much effort your employees are willing to put towards the job and its responsibilities. Wow, that was a lot of metrics... Here’s the thing: these aren’t all of the metrics you could be using to improve your MSP. There are likely hundreds of metrics to choose from, and we know of at least 20 more that we’re willing to share. To get this entire list along with the 20 extra metrics in a handy PDF, you can quickly download here: As we mentioned at the beginning of this list, don’t think that you should be tracking all of these metrics at once. Instead, view this list as a resource for ideas when you need to improve a certain area of your business but don’t know exactly where to start.

Happy New Year! I’ve been “living in 2017” for the past 2 weeks (professionally speaking) and it's great to finally have everyone here! Let me explain… Our 2017 planning started a long time ago and based on my estimate has taken us 80+ hours to get us to where we are today which includes: A well thought out financial budget with solid projections A well grounded assumption based sales projection and quota for the sales team A thoughtful marketing plan to support the sales projections A detailed game plan of the resource investments we plan to make this year A high level product game plan with themes for the coming year A summarized version of all these plans delivered to our Leadership Team All of these documents we’ll be discussing in our full day offsite with our Leadership Team today. Download a free copy of the Offsite Objectives and Agenda that our team is using in today's meeting. So as we enter 2017 Brian and I are very excited to get back into execution mode and out of planning mode. The planning is behind us and but here’s how we got to where we are today: How we made initial financial projections It all started back in August when I shared with Brian our first version of our financial projections for 2017 based on where we were then and what we thought the rest of the year was going to look like. The reason we like to start this early is because putting together financial projections is very time consuming and late summer is our slowest time of the year so we have the time to have this type of conversation. Plus starting that early allows us to really think through what we want to accomplish in the coming year. We put together 2 versions of our financial projections, (1) huge growth and huge investment year which is our high end projection and (2) conservative growth and minimal investment which is our lower end projection. From these two projections we found ourselves somewhere in the middle on our expected projections. Once we finalize that step, we tabled the conversation until the end of Q4 because it was time to get back to work. At the end of the year, we fine tune the projections based on how we performed in Q4 and based on our further discussions about what we want the year to look like. We also spend some time discussing “what if things go wrong” so we know what levers we can pull in the event we have a down year and need to course correct. With our financial projections pretty much wrapped up we are just waiting for year end, then it’s time to turn our attention to our expenses. Then we created a resource game plan Although we are a product company, people make up over ⅔ of our expenses in any given year which means that we start our expense review around our resources and specifically what investments we want to make in the new year. After some deep discussions Brian and I agreed that after having such a huge investment year (growing our team by 64%) in resource it was time to slow down and wait to see the full impact of our resources in 2017. The reality is that adding people to your team is a very expensive process, not only in money of salary and possible recruiting fees but also the time to recruit, interview and then onboard. So with our renewed reduction in resource investments in 2017 that helped another big piece of our projections puzzle. As we headed into the Christmas holiday we had an idea of our revenue projections and our expenses (⅔ of which is resource related). Next, we determined sales projections based on historical performance Once we had our Financial Projections and our Resource Game Plan it was time to start working on our Sales Projections and what it would take to achieve our financial projections. This is a tricky process because of how it will motivate the sales team. If we put the quotas too low it might be too costly if you have accelerators built in. And on the flipside if you put the quotas too high you risk demoralizing the team and them not ever achieving their goals. We use a “historical plus” approach for our sales quota meaning we look at the historical performance of each sales rep and then make “appropriate adjustments” based on grounded assumptions. For example, our Director of Sales now has more people to manage which means we can’t assume he’ll be as productive as he was last year without neglecting his team. Additionally, last year we had a sales rep that started in March but didn’t really finish his onboarding and start selling until June. So we took his 2016 performance from June to Dec and annualized it, then added 10% because we assume he’ll be more efficient in year two. Therefore by “appropriate adjustments” we don’t mean just increasing their quota by XX% just because of last year’s performance. We have seen that at other companies and it can be totally demoralizing. We want the sales team hungry to close as many of the RIGHT deals as possible as SOON as possible. And we don’t want them worried about quota or timing of deals. After that, we selected complimentary marketing investments Now that we had the Sales projections done the next natural question is where are the deals going to come from. We used a historical pattern matching approach for this, meaning we looked at the Deal Sources for the prior year and then updated them for 2017 with some grounded assumptions. For example, our leads from Inbound via our Demo Requests we assumed will have a similar performance in 2017 as there isn’t any material impact to our approach to inbound. There’s no need to increase the expectation if nothing from an investment standpoint has changed. For the areas we saw gaps and needed to come up with Leads we listed our investments we plan to make in order to meet the demand. For example, we are increasing our investments in conferences this coming year to help drive more leads and deals through the pipeline. By this point we have a solid financial projection, we know what investments we plan to make to our team, we know what our sales team needs to achieve via quotas and how marketing is going to support them with the right leads. Now it’s time to fill in the last piece of the puzzle which is our Product Plan. Last, we tied it all together with a product plan The Product Plan is put together by our Head of Product, Brian, where he assesses all the plans we’ve outlined above and then puts together a high level plan for what the Product Team needs to deliver in order for us to hit our goals. In the “product world” it's very difficult to plan too far in advance and most of the best software companies don’t even attempt to try. However, with the information provided above Brian is able to start formulating themes that his team will want to tackle. For example, with our reduction in resource investments and wanting to drive more efficiency with our current team, Brian is looking at projects we can do to help streamline our internal operations. We are a product company so the Product Team’s input into this process because we can’t do this without them. The only thing left is to share with our leadership team There are a lot of details that go into putting this plan together and it's an iterative process, meaning as one part of the plan changes it might impact other parts. Once Brian and I feel comfortable with the plan we share with our Leadership Team. Then during our offsite we get everyone's input on the plans and make any necessary adjustments. It's important that we sync up with the Leadership Team and get on the same page so when we present to the company the following Monday we have ironed out all the details. This allows us to align our Goals for 2017 with our Leadership Team and then ultimately with our entire company. Then we get busy executing… Happy Planning as you kick off the New Year! Our Leadership team is at our Offsite Meeting today where we are discussing all of these topics. For a copy of the agenda & objectives we will cover please download here:

Each December, our team likes to take a bit of time to reflect on our journey over the last 12 months. We talk about how our team has changed, how our product has changed, and which accomplishments we’re most excited about. In 2016, we added 8 new teammates and also announced quite a few major improvements to our product. In case you missed any of those product updates, here’s what you need to know about the 7 Most-Awesome Updates to BrightGauge: # 1. Achieve your Growth Goals with Scorecards Ever wish you had an easy, sure-fire way to hold your team accountable for their individual goals? How about a simple way to track your KPIs each week to make sure the company stays on track, rather than playing catch up later? Done and done. BrightGauge Scorecards are the easiest way to make sure you achieve your growth goals. Here’s how they work: by assigning a KPI to an owner you are holding them accountable to ensure the number meets the goal for the week. If the goal is met, it turns green and if not, it turns red. We have been using Scorecards at BrightGauge for quite some time and they have truly been a game changer. For those of you that follow Traction or Rockefeller Habits, this will save you TONS OF TIME! See what our CEO, Eric, has to say about the feature: # 2. QuickBooks Online Integration Our QBO integration gives you the ability to visualize and track your financial metrics in real time. You no longer need to wait for your P&L at the end of the month or spend hours creating a spreadsheet. When combined with any of our other integrations, you’re provided with a single view of the metrics you need to run your business. Learn more about QBO + BrightGauge. # 3. Datto Integration Ever wish you could seamlessly track your backups and manage the amount of data you are storing for your clients, in real time? Consider it done! Now it’s a breeze to track how much of each device is in use, how many devices are out of communication, and so much more. See what our customers think and learn more about Datto + BrightGauge # 4. Leaderboard Gauge with Team Photos It’s a proven fact that healthy competition helps companies significantly improve employee performance on routine tasks! That’s why we introduced the Leaderboard gauge as a way to rank your team’s performance and boost the competition. # 5. Rotating Dashboards With this new feature you can keep as many gauges as you need in sight. No more trying to squeeze as much as possible into one display… give your data the space it needs to shine! Learn more about rotating dashboards here. # 6. Technician Dashboards A great compliment to leaderboards, technician dashboards display the same metrics that a service manager would track, but are filtered to only include the data from a specific technician. See how easy it is to help focus your technician’s efforts on the right task at the right time! # 7. Client Dashboards Take your Client Reporting a step further with a dashboard that shows your clients the information they want, how they want it! With Client Dashboards your metrics can be shared in real time, providing the transparency that will help build trust and showcase the value your services provide. Learn more about Client Dashboards here. Now tell us, what was your favorite BrightGauge product update in 2016?

If you’re not surprised by these 3 facts, nothing will faze you: 80% of your future profits will come from your most loyal customers (about 20% of your customer base) An increase in customer retention of 10% increases the value of a company by 30%. Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profit by as much as 95% Those facts, as reported in this CMO article, give you an idea of how powerful customer satisfaction (CSAT) is. In other words, CSAT data can help you grow exponentially, if you understand it and use it the right way. Everything needed to track CSAT is in Zendesk, and with a little tweaking, you can be improving your scores in no time. Here’s how to use Zendesk to track and improve CSAT: How to Enable Zendesk’s CSAT Feature Follow this guide to enable and customize Zendesk’s built in CSAT feature. You won’t be able to change the actual survey much, but that’s okay. Zendesk’s default survey has been well optimized and follows best practices. Their survey has an average open rate of 21%, which is great! Once you’ve enabled the feature, or if you already have it enabled, proceed on to the next step. How to Improve Your CSAT Score Understand the Purpose of CSAT One thing to always keep in mind is that CSAT is not about what you want to know. It’s about what your customer wants to share with you. In other words, CSAT is a feedback channel for your customers. The feedback you receive from them is important, and you should set aside time to review their comments regularly. Share Feedback with the Team At BrightGauge, we’ve got a channel in our team’s Slack messaging app, which we use to share customer feedback we’ve received. Sharing feedback has helped us see which features our customers get excited about, praise team members for great customer service, and understand what we could be doing better. It also provides a big increase in transparency. Here’s what it looks like: Your company can experience the same benefits by sharing customer feedback. If you are not sharing feedback yet, we highly recommend it. React Quickly We’re not talking about response times, although those are important too! We are referring to how soon you identify and respond to trends and changes in CSAT scores. Are your scores down after a change in procedures? Do you notice that a customer’s CSAT drops off after 6 months? These are the types of changes you should be able to identify. You need to be able to check your CSAT in real-time. You also need to be reviewing your data on at least a weekly basis, but preferably more often. Look for changes, trends, and exceptions when you're checking your data. Making decisions with these things in mind will result in an increase in service team efficiency and company success. Service Success with Zendesk and BrightGauge We mentioned how important it is to track your data in real-time, and there’s no better way to do that than with dashboards. Monitoring your data on dashboards allows you and your team to react faster to changes in your data. You can even look at historical data to identify and observe trends. With this, you can make proactive decisions and predict changes to workload like the number of tickets a new client will add. Displaying your information on dashboards around the office will improve your team’s performance. They’ll be able to look up and see where they stand in relation to company goals, increasing productivity, and how their individual contributions truly impact the business. One of the biggest benefits of using our integration is the ability to combine data from different data sources onto one dashboard. This gives you a full view of your business and enables you to make better decisions. It also helps you track how changes in support metrics impact other aspects of the business, such as churn. Check out our recent Zendesk integration announcement to learn more about how it can help you improve your service team. Bonus: Improve CSAT with Video Support One idea we’ve used to drastically improve customer satisfaction is to send video clips for responses in support. Kristian, our Customer Support Specialist, began including them in our support responses not too long ago. His reasoning was that he’s a visual learner and he believes most others are as well. Since implementing, we’ve consistently gotten feedback like this: And this: Video support was incredibly easy to implement and the results have been nothing short of fantastic. Read more about how Kristian revolutionized our approach here. Ready to learn more about about customer satisfaction? It all starts with making sure that you’re doing business with your ideal customers. Check out our free webinar featuring Richard Tubb, former MSP Owner turned Consultant: