How Community Association Management Companies Can Implement Metrics to Measure Performance

Best estimates suggest that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated every day. That’s 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 pieces of information created and stored in a server to be collated and used. For comparison, you would need one billion iPhone 13x with upgraded storage to hold that data. Yet, with all that data, many of us in the HOA industry have not adapted to this data driven mindset and have no objective data about our company’s performance.  

One of the simplest tools is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), an objective piece of data that can be used to determine the performance of an employee or department. The only metric most management companies worry about is how many homeowners are yelling at them every day. By implementing KPIs, you can measure your company’s performance and see where you can improve.

KPIs don’t need to be complicated algorithms. They can be as simple as missed call percentage or number of open work orders.  They allow all of us to see and measure our performance. Instead of waiting for annual reviews, we can get daily or weekly reports that show how quickly we respond to emails or how many calls out of 100 went directly to voicemail.

In 2017, we began using KPI at my community management company in San Jose, Calif. One of the first metrics that we started tracking was missed call percentage. We had around 50 communities and two receptionists, so I thought we were doing well in terms of coverage. We got a few complaints about non-responsiveness, but I wrote it off as owners needing to complain about something. The first week that we pulled the report, I discovered our missed call percentage for the main line was 36%. I found that, when a previous receptionist left, we didn’t adjust the phone tree correctly and 1/3 of our calls were going down a black hole. Without the objective data, I never would’ve known there was a problem. Once I had the numbers in front of me, it took less than half an hour to fix.

So how do you start? Firstly, don’t try to track a thousand metrics in your first go. I recommend aiming for eight to fifteen­ metrics across your company. If you’re a department head or CAM, make that number three to five. You don’t need special software. Create a shared Excel or Google Sheet file and create a column for each week. Have each row be a KPI. That’s it. Tracking KPIs is a lot like exercise. You don’t set out to run a marathon your first month, you walk/jog around the block until you develop a habit.

Let’s take a customer service department. Here are the five metrics to start with:

-Missed Call Percentage

-Customer Satisfaction Rate

-Average Call Time

-Number of Calls Per Day

-First Contact Resolution

Most of these metrics should be readily available through your software or are easy to add on with a simple widget. When you start tracking these metrics, you’ll see which days are busiest, which times of the month are busiest, which agents take the most calls, etc.

What do you do with this data? Don’t set goals your first week. Just let the data accumulate for a month and see what the patterns are. Once you establish the normal ranges, KPIs will help you lay the foundation for stability and scalability. You can begin to see trouble before it causes problems. If you see that one Customer Satisfaction Rate is handling less calls, you can talk to them before they fully burn out or damage a client relationship. You can also see when it’s time to hire additional staff for an area.

KPI numbers won’t magically solve everything overnight, but they will provide you with vital information about where to focus your efforts. Within six months, your company will be unrecognizable, and your team will have more support.

For a complete list of KPIs, visit gordianstaffing.com.