Your business relies on financial metrics to determine the success or failure of a campaign, product, or service. It provides you with insights into the effectiveness of your strategy. The data you gather enables you to determine patterns you can leverage to gain a competitive advantage. However, you should also review the non-financial performance measures of your company. Doing so provides you with the context you need to understand why a particular campaign, product, service. This qualitative approach allows you to learn more about your employees and your customers.
These are some of the non-financial performance measures you should consider analyzing to improve your business.
Customer Happiness
Happy customers are also satisfied ones. They like your products and services for a variety of reasons such as its features, the response of your team whenever they have questions and complaints, return and exchange policies, refund rules, and others. They are willing to share and recommend your brand to their relatives, friends, colleagues, and others who are looking for a product or service. They become your unofficial brand ambassadors sharing your story and offerings in their social media platforms or word of mouth. They are a priceless part of your marketing campaign and the success of your business.
One of the pillars of your company is the repeat purchases of your most loyal customers. They keep buying your products and patronizing your services. They inject cash into your operations which allows you to take calculated risks that expand your customer base. You can also gather data about your repeat customers to identify the reasons behind their behavior. This allows you to improve your sales and marketing strategies. Your team will be able to customize campaigns that have a high success rate.
A strong customer service team is a must. Your products may have cutting edge technology and features that set it apart, but if your customer service is poor, you’ll have plenty of dissatisfied customers. Train your customer service team to handle all sorts of customers. Establish policies and guidelines they can follow so that they have a standard way of providing customers with solutions. Provide customers with a timeframe from when they send a query or make a complaint until its resolution. Be present in various platforms such as social media, email, phone number and others. These are convenient ways your customers can contact you or give their feedback.
On the other end of the spectrum, dissatisfaction among your customers has a negative effect on your bottom line. They’ll look for other brands that can meet their needs and/or wants. The low ratings they give your products or services create a negative perception around your company. This makes it difficult to attract new customers or expand your reach.
These might be non-financial performance measures, but they can either have a positive or negative effect on your revenue. Provide your customers with feedback forms to learn more about them. This enables you to find ways and insights into improving your customer service and products. The more you know about your customers, the better you’ll be able to deliver their needs.
Employee Satisfaction
Your employees (especially your sales and customer service team) often must deal with customers in various ways such as complaints, online chat, email, phone conversations, in-store sales, and others. Overworked and underpaid staff will perform their jobs poorly. Your turnover rate will also be high if employees don’t like working for you. You’ll spend more resources to recruit, hire, onboard, and train new employees.
Unsatisfied employees might treat customers poorly. They would reply late to questions, go to work late, be unresponsive and inattentive to the needs of customers, and wouldn’t care if the business is unprofitable. Lack of continuation in your workforce creates similar problems. A happy and satisfied workforce improves business operations and maintains profitability.
Regardless of the size of your business, identify ways to improve the satisfaction of your employees. Make sure that the salary you offer is competitive for the same job in your niche. Provide your staff with a reasonable schedule and workload. Consider short-term outsourcing during peak seasons so that your team isn’t taking on more workload. Set out a clear promotion plan for your employees so that they have an idea how they can move up in your company. This also enables them to establish short and long-term goals that motivate them. Invest in the skills and growth of your employees. Sponsor certification courses related to their work. These hone their skills and improve their productivity and efficiency.
Relationships with Business Partners
It will be difficult to succeed and run your business efficiently without suppliers and partners. Your team won’t have all the expertise and skills they need to do certain tasks effectively. You might need to outsource. The latter enables you to cut costs while partnering with experts in their fields. Your team will be more productive when they don’t multitask.
Your relationship with suppliers can get you better payment schedules, discounts, favorable terms, and other benefits. You have to show them you’re a reliable business partner that pays on time and fulfills obligations. They might also allow you to renegotiate terms if they think you’re reliable and trustworthy. Communicate with your partners on a regular basis. This makes sure all parties are on the same page regarding dues, contracts, and needs. This reduces miscommunication that may cause delays or arguments.
Build and nurture your business relationships. Doing so allows you to reduce operational expenses and maximize your resources. Delays, non-fulfilment of obligations, and other similar problems have a negative effect on your company’s finances. This also trickles down to your customers. The items they want will often be out of stock and their orders delayed.
Keep these non-financial performance measures in mind. These allow you to create a qualitative assessment you can include with your quantitative review of your business. These put your numbers in the right context. This enables you to glean insights you may have missed.If you need assistance with identifying mistakes in your accounting books and correcting them, we at Robookkeeper can assist you. We have a team of experienced virtual accountants that have the skills and certifications to get the job done. We offer first-rate virtual bookkeeping services for SMEs.
