The COVID-19 outbreak has changed the world we work in and live in. Many organizations around the globe were forced to switch to remote working, and that raised an issue of online employee monitoring.
Have you faced the same problem? Are you trying to understand what metrics to use to measure your team’s productivity remotely? We’ve got you covered. Here is a list of the most important metrics in sales, marketing, customer support, and HR.
Sales Performance Metrics
If your sales team doesn’t work effectively, your company will be doomed to failure. Therefore, you should pay close attention to the following sales performance metrics.
Call Volume
Call Volume is the total number of calls handled by one employee within a given time period, for instance, within one hour or one day. If you analyze this metric in pair with the total sales closed, you will see how effective your sales agents are working with customers.
Example of KPI target: 200 calls per day
Sales Per Rep
Sales Per Rep is the total number of sales made by one employee. You need to monitor this indicator to see which of your employees close more deals and heavily contribute to the overall sales growth.
Example of KPI target: 50 sales per week
The average deal costs
Another important metric is the average deal cost. Some employees close just a few deals a week but bring your company more money. You should always take that into account when analyzing your team’s performance.
Example of KPI target: $5,000 per sale
Customer Support Performance Metrics
The long-term success of your business is defined by the quality of services that your customer support provides. The better your employees treat your customers, the higher level of loyalty your brand gains.
If you want to ensure that your remote team is doing everything right, check out the following metrics.
Call Volume
Call Volume is the total number of calls handled by one customer support agent within a given time period. You can use this metric to measure the number of incoming calls to a Customer Support as well as calls queued to an Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) service.
Example of KPI target: 70 calls per day
Average Speed to Answer
This metric can be defined as the following, “the average amount of time it takes a customer support agent to answer an incoming call or message in online chat”. The faster your employees reply to the customers, the higher the customer satisfaction they generate.
Example of KPI target: 2 minutes
Customer Service Satisfaction
Using this metric, you can analyze how well your customer support agents perform their job. If there are more unsatisfied customers than satisfied ones, it means that your remote team doesn’t work effectively enough.
Example of KPI target: 90% of customers are satisfied with the level of support received.
Performance Metrics for Marketing, HR, and Other Teams
If you manage teams other than sales and customer support, you should focus your online employee monitoring efforts on following basic metrics.
The time spent on active work
When your team performs their tasks remotely, you need to control the time team members spend on active work. You can monitor the intensity of key presses and mouse clicks as well as the usage of computer monitoring software.
Example of KPI target: 90% of a workday. If an employee works 8 hours a day, he should spend 7 hours 20 minutes on “active tasks”.
Downtime
The time spent on activities that are not related to work. For instance, the time spent watching YouTube videos or browsing Facebook.
Example of KPI target: no more than 5% of a workday.
Basic Tips on How to Measure Employee’s Productivity Remotely
You already know what metrics you should measure. Now let’s talk about how to monitor the employees’ activity the right way:
Create a list of forbidden websites, for instance, job search aggregators and social media – the system will notify you about violations.
Create a list of websites and tools that your employees use for work. For instance, if you manage a team of copywriters, whitelist SupremeDissertations, ClassyEssay, and other writing and proofreading websites.
Set realistic, attainable KPI’s for every team member and the entire team.
Monitor employee’s performance in dynamic. If an employee has had a one-day drop in productivity, don’t apply any penalties.
Make sure that everyone is aware of online employee monitoring. You can’t track your team members’ activity without their notice.
How to Boost Productivity?
If one of your best employees doesn’t perform as effectively as he used to, don’t rush to fire him. Try to figure out what has gone wrong and fix the situation. Reach out to the employee and discuss his recent results.
Timothy Milson, an editor at TrustMyPaper, says: “Remote work has one big drawback – a lack of communication. Talking to each other using video conferencing tools and messengers, we sometimes forget (or feel uncomfortable) to discuss small important things. If you want to improve your team’s productivity, you should boost interactions and encourage honest conversations”.
In Conclusion
After switching to remote working, your team may start performing tasks more or less productive. And you should use productivity metrics to make sure that your employees are using their work hours properly.
Just keep in mind one important thing. Some of your employees have never worked from home before, and it might be challenging for them to get used to “remote mode”. You need to support your team in the way you can to ensure that the work will be done on time.
BIO: Nicole Garrison is a project manager and writer at BestEssayEducation. She has been managing remote teams for five years. Nicole knows how to make virtual teams work, and she is happy to share her knowledge with others.