Building Technical Operations Metrics Metrics Metrics

What are some useful metrics for healthcare startups?

Initial product metrics from user analytics could include:How often users sign onHow much time they’re spending using itConsider keeping track of time of dayAllan has provided some good basic metrics as well. However, as you further develop the product, you then need to collect the engineering and product costs to build the pricing model in addition to CAC you will need to know for the pricing model:Cost to retain/CRC/Post sale support cost (olden days called maintenance) to build the pricing model which feeds into the revenue model.Further in the lifecycle of the company, you will want reporting metrics (exactly how it sounds “report card”) and operating metrics, the latter of which represent dials for the business to be adjusted.The term “Startup” does not tell me what phase the company is in exactly and what the next milestones are. There are a lot of possible metrics: product metrics, reporting metrics, and operating metrics. Which ones are relevant at this time completely depends on what you are trying to achieve i.e. confirm/streamline features & scale product, pricing model build, or if you’re ready to identify the core metrics which drive the business.

As a product manager, what features will you build to increase Net Promoter Score metrics?

This can vary a lot, depending on the type of product (B2C, B2B), and how simple or complex the product is. Imagine what you can enhance on a platform like Salesforce compared to a check list app on your phone.For NPS, you want to drive up the users that love your product, or encourage and make it easy to promote your product and recommend it to others.If you only marginally improve the product, you will not get enough movement out of the middle group of users into promoters/loyalists - the users that will recommend the product to others and give you a good score.With a focus more toward B2B products, here are a few area/features that come to mind, mostly around the user experience:UI - improve the interface so that it looks great, has consistent placement across the product, works on all devices/browsers, countries, etc.Intuitive, easy to use - make it super easy for users to get their job done; if it is moderately hard or time consuming today, add features to help simplify and speed up.Built in capability to ask the users if they are satisfied and solicit feedback to improve the product.Help - Make it easy to find online help, or provide tool-tips, tutorials, videos, etc. within the product to guide the user. An example product that offers this for SaaS businesses is UserIQ - The Customer Growth Platform™If your NPS score is lower because of detractors, then consider focusing more on moving the needle with your unhappy users first. Then, take the next iteration to keep your happy users happy, and gain more promoters.

As a Product Manager, what features will you build to increase customer retention rate metrics?

Talk to your customers.Only your customers can tell you what matters to them. How you learn what to build from what they tell you isn’t quite as straightforward.Customers don’t fully know what features improve customer retention. They have ideas about what to build, interests and problems they think are worth solving.Each and every customer idea is a rabbit hole your business could get stuck in trying to turn that idea into a feature.Bad product decisions are costly. Development and testing of new features cost thousands of dollars.The opportunity costs of building new features can be even higher. When you factor in customer education, onboarding, and support, companies invest significant resources for new features.For these reasons it’s important to methodically validate customer interest.To get useful answers from your customers that help build features that add value to your business, identify customer problems relating to the workflow your business improves.Getting useful answers is achieved by asking unbiased questions that reveal and prioritize previous customer behavior above customer interest and demographics.Keep the context of your customer’s behavior in focus by asking when problems customers think are important happened in the past and what they did about them.Rule out false positives that indicate interest rather than predict behavior.Once you’ve validated customer problems, context customers experience them in, and value as evidenced by previous behavior, it’s time to weigh customer problem/solution merits.If a feature doesn’t leverage the value your business provides, don’t build it.Even then, understand which features your customers currently use and refine feature education, onboarding, and support before building new ones.

As a product manager, what features will you build to increase product performance metrics?

I would build the ones that make people happy. Think about forks. Then think about the experiences you’ve had with forks. What are the experiences that left you frustrated, angry, and looking for another one? If you use a really good fork, and you keep reusing it, the features of the fork will melt away from your consciousness and you will remember the experiences of eating great food or sharing the moments with family.Now, think about the person using the fork. Is it a baby? A toddler? An adult? What product features and attributes should be in the design to best serve the person’s needs? Next, think about the performance metrics over time with respect to a person versus populations. Naturally, a child’s fork becomes much less useful as a person grows up and has better dexterity. Therefore, reuse over time may not be a great performance metric.Look at failures of the product with respect to quality attributes. Think about how often the product harms people. Does that fork’s tine break off and cause a choking hazard? Does the product decompose and have a minimal environmental impact?I tend to favor those features that are born from ingenuity. I love those moments when people say “why didn’t I think of that” or “clever” because those are memorable experiences.