The BrightGauge Blog

Did you know that employees believe 30-50% of their peers lack accountability, according to a study from the American Management Association? Of course, accountability can refer to a number of different traits. Are they socially accountable, and willing to admit a social faux pas? Are they accountable in their performance and effectiveness? Are they accountable to their team and collaborators? Do they appropriately prioritize their tasks and inform stakeholders of changes? In truth, accountability is all of the above and more. To inject accountability into a team that is lacking it requires a concerted effort from the top of an organization. To encourage accountability, employees must have a clear definition of the standard that they are being held to. Defining clear and realistic goals is crucial. Accountability is driven by company culture and that culture comes from the top down. Goal-setting is the most critical component for fostering an environment that encourages accountability. Learn the right way to set and track goals, establish a cadence, and drive your organization forward using accountability. Setting Goal Scope and Creating Shared Purpose Accountability is driven and facilitated by the culture within an organization. The policies that shape that culture must be expected of all employees, from the owner down to new hires that are just learning the ropes. Successful teams must embrace accountability as individuals and groups, but organizations must also be accountable as a whole. Accountability works its way into company culture when teams are willing to take ownership of their objectives, not because they have to, but because they want to. When they are unsuccessful, those same individuals should be willing to take ownership of their failures. Passing the buck and making excuses leads to resentment and ultimately works against an accountable workplace. Accountability doesn’t come from strict rules and discipline. It comes from an open environment where stakeholders aren’t afraid to contribute. The goals that you set within your company should encompass all levels of work and collaboration: Organizational goals. Goals that encompass the company or organization as a whole. Organizational goals are the driving force behind shaping all other goals. Team goals. Goals for departments, teams, and collaborations. These goals should help dictate the individual goals employees set for themselves. Individual Goals. Individual goals help advance careers while progressing toward a company's larger objectives. These goals should build toward both team and organization goals. Creating a shared purpose for teams ensures that no large goals fall squarely on the shoulders of one person. Instead, those successes and failures fall on the company as a whole. According to Partners in Leadership’s Workplace Accountability Study, 85% of those surveyed were not sure what their organization was trying to achieve. This kind of disconnect actively works against accountability in the workplace. Clearly defining the organization’s goals and connecting them to smaller team goals provides clear insight into company direction and motives. Every employee should have clarity on the importance of specific goals to see the bigger picture. Setting Effective Long and Short-Term Goals When setting goals, each type should include both short-term and long-term goals. Long-term goals are completed after successfully completing a series of short-term goals. One goal should build to the next, one step at a time toward a larger company vision. Although long-term goals mark the finish line, short-term goals play the largest role in daily accountability. Fast, sustained completion of goals provides consistent rewards. To set realistic goals, those goals should be tied to specific business metrics that set a clear line for success. These metrics, known as key performance indicators (KPIs) may include metrics like revenue, sales figures, or job-specific metrics such as first call resolution rate and cost per incident. Accountability is a Two-Way Street According to the Workplace Accountability Study by Partners in Leadership, 80% of respondents surveyed said that feedback was only provided when something went wrong with a project. This sends the wrong signal to employees, who begin to see feedback as a negative development. A step where feedback is given should be a part of any project, regardless of the outcome. That feedback shouldn’t just focus on negatives, but highlight the positives as well. This promotes a culture of accountability for both the good and bad and lets employees know they are appreciated. Next Steps for Improving Accountability Accountability matters, but is not easy to achieve in large companies. It starts from the top down, from organizational goals through helping employees define their own. Performance accountability is achievable when employees have clear initiatives, but too often organizational accountability is misunderstood and confused with discipline. This does more harm than good. As you make changes to facilitate more accountability within your company, remember to take things one step at a time. You can’t make an unaccountable workforce change their stripes overnight, but you can make progress overtime with a game plan and consistency. Are you ready to take the next step in setting up a culture of accountability in your company? Learn more about the right way to set and track goals, establish a cadence, and drive your organization forward using accountability.

The beginning of the year is a very anxious time of year at BrightGauge. For us, Q4 is our biggest quarter of the year and the Sales team hustles until the end of the year leaving no stone unturned. So when the calendar changes, we are still coming off the “high” of Q4 and the year end rush. But now the page has turned on the prior year, the high fives have been doled out and the champagne has been poured... it’s time to focus on this year. The entire sales team gets very anxious when we start planning the new year wondering “how’s my compensation changing” or “what’s my new quota going to be”. By the second week of January I sit with the Sales Team and we lay out the quota for the year. Like clockwork I can see them in their heads calculating all the work they have to do for the year which seems like a daunting task. But like I tell our Sales Team: “Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle” At the end of the day, Sales is a numbers game. Although the percentages may be different based on how good you are, it's still a game of getting as many non-customers as possible into your funnel and then working them through the funnel to customer status. When we told Stephen his quota had almost doubled to $80,000 after last year doing $45,000 he had a minor panic attack. But then we took the annual goal and broke it down into daily & weekly goals. Here’s how our annual Sales formula works: $80,000 - total new business Stephen needs to book in 2017 $64,000 - total revenue from new customers (80%) $16,000 - total revenue from upgrades of existing customers (20%) $250 - Average Sales Price $75 - Average Upgrade Amount 256 - Number of Signups Required ($64,000 / $250) 213 - Number of Upgrades Required ($16,000 / $75) 512 - Number of Opportunities Required (256 deals @ 50% closure rate) At the end of the calculations, we translate that $80,000 quota into the following: 10 Opportunities Opened Per Week 7 Demos Completed Per Week 40 Conversations Per Week And instead of worrying about the $80,000 all Stephen has to do is worry about what he needs to get done today and this week. And to always remember: “Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle” Now that we have his targets for each week, we use our BrightGauge Scorecards to monitor his progress each week. This allows him and the entire team to see if he’s on track or off track for a given week and course correct as necessary. The more green the better! And this also has the added psychological benefit of taking a monster quota goal and breaking it down into bite size chunks that are easier for Stephen to focus on. To learn more about scorecards and how to help your team monitor weekly progress towards their KPIs, please visit our BrightGauge Scorecards Overview.

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:

“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:

Metrics are important at every level of a company, but nowhere else is this more apparent than in customer service. That’s why every support role should be constantly monitoring customer service metrics, whether that be in the form of a dashboard or a report. One of the most difficult parts of monitoring customer support data is knowing which metrics to monitor in the first place! To help you decide, here are the metrics that we track at BrightGauge: Customer Support Metrics for the Whole Team At our HQ, we’ve got some of our most important customer support metrics displayed on a wall-mounted dashboard. These metrics are more of an overview than a detailed look, and help to give team members an idea of their performance at a glance. We use: Open Tickets by Assignee - this helps create some healthy competition and give team members an idea of where they stand. Tickets by Week (Last 13 Weeks) - provides a historical context for data and helps to identify trends vs. isolated incidents. New Tickets - the biggest number on our dashboard, New Tickets provides a quick look at how many tickets have not yet been triaged. Open Tickets by Type - this number provides an at-a-glance look at both your customer support team’s performance and which types of tickets are being held up. Unsolved Tickets by Type - another metric to quickly gauge your performance and potential bottlenecks. Kill Rate - allows you to make sure you're at or near a 0 backlog (or the weeks where you're making up for down weeks). Having metrics for the whole team is great, and is definitely a necessity, but it doesn’t end there. You also need to get more detailed with metrics for your Team Manager and Reps. Customer Support Metrics for your Engineers Jessica, one of our Customer Support Specialists, monitors metrics on both a daily and a monthly basis. On a daily basis, she constantly keeps an eye on the New Tickets gauge while at her desk to track those that have yet to be acknowledged. In addition to that metric, she tracks the following metrics on a monthly basis: Number of Tickets Opened - provides quick insight into trends and allows prediction of ticket load next month. Number of Tickets Closed - provides quick insight into how the team is handling the ticket load and whether additional resources will be needed. Kill Rate (Closed/Opened) - a combination of the above gauges to provide even more insight into workload, resources and performance. Average Response Time - helps keep an eye on any SLAs and identify any potential bottlenecks. Average Customer Satisfaction - based on surveys, this gives insight into how pleased customers are with our service. Picking your Support Metrics Not every company or team is the same: you may be structured differently or be simply using different data sources. That’s why it’s important to choose which metrics are important at each level of your service team. You’ll know you got it right when you begin to see performance increases in the areas you’re tracking! Ready to learn more about how to improve your business with the right metrics? Download our free guide on Key Performance Indicators:

Last week I shared about the main driver of our 60%+ growth in 2016 which you can check out here. After the post, we got a lot of questions about the specifics of our Data Driven approach to growth so we decided to sneak in one more webinar before the end of the year and share all of our secrets. During the webinar I’ll share the specific things we did to drive our growth and they all tie back to a data driven approach. Goals - We kicked off the year with a rigorous approach to setting and working towards our goals. This approach allowed us to sync the entire team with our company goals and then break down the goals for individuals to be able to contribute. Accountability - The main driver for our new Scorecards Feature was our need to help hold our team accountable for hitting their goals. Using scorecards was the only way for each team member to “own a number” that impacts our growth and to be able to visualize how they are performing over time. Cadence - The regular cadence of our weekly meetings where we reviewed our KPIs (from our Scorecards) and progress on our Goals was the game changer and really drove the accountability home. We’ll share what our meeting frequency is and how we structure our meetings. Getting Your Team Involved - We’ll also talk about how we got each of our team members involved, from the Co-Founders, down to the newest employee. This was not easy and took some time to perfect but we found the right formula that works for us and we think the same formula can work for any small to medium business. There’s a lot more we will cover but these are just some of the main highlights with the purpose of giving you practical takeaways that you can implement in your business immediately. If you missed the live webinar, you can still access the free, recorded version...

A Swedish fiber broadband provider did an experiment in which they had 4 people do everyday tasks while wearing a virtual reality headset. The headset would use a camera to show them everything they would normally see, with a slight delay. It’s an amusing way to show what happens when you see things with a time lag - each participant failed at everyday tasks because they weren’t seeing the world around them in real time. Why then, do people expect to successfully manage a customer service team without real-time metrics to guide them? Since tracking metrics in real-time is one of the most important parts of managing a successful team, we’ve put together a list of the top 4 benefits of monitoring live Zendesk metrics throughout the day: 1. You Will Understand How Your Support Team Is Performing Without real-time metrics, you’ll never understand how your support team is performing. Only how they have been performing. There’s a big difference between those two scenarios. It’s like driving a car by only looking in your rear view mirrors. Sure, you may drive for a little without crashing, but you’re bound to crash the second something unexpected happens. Using real-time metrics allows you to see both what’s in front of you and behind you. By monitoring how your team is performing in real-time, you are able to correct course much faster if you happen to stray from your targets. It also enables you to better predict what will happen in the future by combining current data with historical data. You’ll have a better understanding of how your support team is performing. Additionally, you'll better manage and correct your team when they aren’t performing well. 2. You Can See Where Tickets Are Getting Stuck in the Process It can be tricky to identify where tickets are held up during the support process. There is almost always one or two bottlenecks in the ticket process. A bottleneck could be something your team needs to work on, or it could be the result of your customer's actions. Our sister company, Compuquip, identified two bottlenecks by using real-time data. The first was in the way that customers submitted tickets. Customers would submit tickets via phone, which slowed down the process. They also noticed that their engineers were not triaging tickets effectively. By fixing their two bottlenecks, Compuquip lowered their response time to under 8 minutes. 3. You Will Identify Problem Customers Early with Repeat Ticket Openers There's always one problem customer who your whole team knows by name. Some teams are luckier than others, and it takes them a while to identify who that problem customer is, but every team finds their problem customer eventually. Although when you monitor your metrics in real-time, you won’t need to wait to identify problem customers because you’ll see the data almost instantly. Identifying problem customers early will allow you to identify opportunities to train a customer. This can go a long way in protecting your service team's valuable time. 4. You Can Track How Fast Your Team Is Responding When it comes to responsiveness, we can’t stress the importance enough. The response time of your customer service team can cause a company to sink or swim, because just one dip in responsiveness could result in lost customers. Check out these eye-opening metrics (pulled from a previous blog): Failure to resolve an issue quickly is one of the top 2 reasons for a customer loss. 41% of customers expect a response within 6 hours, and 24 hours is often considered the maximum acceptable response time. Tracking responsiveness in real time enables you to speed up your team’s support right away. You'll be able to prevent your team from slipping on response time in the first place as opposed to realizing and addressing the issues weeks later. with a service ticket dashboard, it's easy to monitor your metrics in real time The Best Way to Track Zendesk Metrics in Real Time There’s no better way to monitor metrics in real time than with BrightGauge and Zendesk together. Using both dashboards and automated reports in one simple solution allows you to display all your key metrics for everyone to see - a surefire way to encourage your team to rally around your company’s goals!

Harvest offers time tracking, expense tracking, and invoicing software to tens of thousands of businesses, and we’re excited to make it easier for those businesses to track their expenses and hours. Never miss out on an hour of billable time again with BrightGauge and Harvest! Our Harvest integration gives you the ability to track and manage your hours, expenses, and invoices in real time. Not only will you save time for yourself, but you’ll also ensure that no details are missed! Here are a few of the key metrics you can track with a Harvest dashboard: Hours vs Budget helps you track your team’s progress on all projects. Amount Invoiced helps you keep track of all the invoices you sent out this month. Amount Uninvoiced helps you keep track of the work you’ve done, but not yet invoiced. If you’re a Harvest user, then the ease of the product speaks for itself, but here’s what BrightGauge customers have to say about the integration: “Any Harvest user should use BrightGauge. It’s a no-brainer. The access to the data that BrightGauge provides is leaps and bounds above what they provide organically,” explains Evan Jones, CEO of Jones IT (read the complete Jones IT case study here). The Harvest integration comes in addition to the sales, support, financial, CSAT, and other data that you can already view in your BrightGauge. In other words, you can get a full view of the metrics that help you run your business, in one place. You no longer need to log into all those separate sources to compile reports and view data for meetings!