Imagine that you are in charge of tracking your company’s Key Performance Indicators.
If you were asked to track a metric such as sales made, that would be easy. You would probably just keep track of the number of sales made on a daily, quarterly, and yearly basis.
Now what if you were asked to track client satisfaction? A little more difficult, right? That’s because client satisfaction is a qualitative metric, while sales made is a quantitative metric.
Quantitative v Qualitative Metrics
Let’s talk about the difference between qualitative and quantitative metrics. Essentially, a qualitative metric is something that is measured by quality, while a quantitative metric is something that is measured by quantity. Quantitative metrics are often easier to measure because it can be as simple as collecting the numerical data and putting it together.
Where people get stuck is with the qualitative metrics. How often have we been in a company that stresses the importance of increasing client satisfaction but received little to no direction on how to get to that goal? That’s because client satisfaction is harder to effectively measure. When we’re not able to effectively measure a metric, it’s difficult for us to see a path to increase that metric.
The ability to measure qualitative metrics both allows your company access to a greater amount of useful data and gives management the tools to see how to improve those metrics across the company.
Measuring Qualitative Metrics
Measuring qualitative metrics requires you to first define what that metric means in the context of your company’s culture and industry.
Here’s a helpful trick you can use. You can do this exercise on your own or with your team in a brainstorming session.
So you want to measure client satisfaction. Think about two groups of clients. Group A is the control group--they are your current clients. Group B consists of clients with higher satisfaction than Group A. Start listing out the things that make Group B different from Group A.
Group A: Control
20% of clients leave reviews
10% of clients return
Average number of referrals per client: 1
Average number of calls to customer service per client per month: 0.5
...
Group B: Ideal
60% of clients leave reviews
50% of clients return
Average number of referrals per client: 5
Average number of calls to customer service per client per month: 2
…
After this process, you now see what is important to your company when it comes to client satisfaction. Now when holding team meetings about improving client satisfaction, you can identify specific areas to focus on.
When metrics are defined, they can be measured; and when they can be measured, they can be improved.
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