It sure can be a challenge to measure things in business, can’t it?

After all, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

But before you begin to measure, you need to know what to measure. And it’s nice to identify your lead indicators so you can mitigate problems coming down the road.

Here are some of the top lead indicators to spend your time measuring:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

How likely is a customer to recommend your product or service to others?

That’s what Net Promoter Score measures.

When you consistently provide excellent service, you turn your customers into salespeople.

What’s better than free sales?

So, it only makes sense to make NPS one of the lead indicators you track.

NPS then can be used to affect lag indicators like retention, growth, and churn.

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Happy customers remain loyal. They keep your revenue stable and predictable. And they’re highly likely to tell their colleagues about you too.

Plus, you’re in customer service to help keep your customers happy, right?

Did you know you can also compare your customer satisfaction score with other companies in different industries?

Yes. You can make an apples-to-apples comparison.

And you can do it at the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

3. Activation

“Activation” simply refers to the time it takes to make your customer active in your system.

The shorter your customer’s time to activation, the shorter their time to value. And the shorter their time to value, the greater your ROI.

Activation isn’t just constrained to being a lead indicator though. It can be a lagging indicator too, if that’s how you choose to measure it.

4. Usage

How much does your customer use your product or service?

The more they use what you offer, the more likely they are to remain your customer and not move on to your competition.

And of course, it will affect lagging indicators like retention and churn.

5. Bonus: Top Lagging Indicator

You now have the top leading indicators at your disposal.

It’s only fair to also reward your reading up to this point with the top lag indicator you can measure: renewal.

Renewal is the rate at which customers choose to purchase your product or service again.

If they do that, you know you’ve done a lot right.

By the way, lead indicators like adoption, customer engagement score, and productivity of your customer service associates are key in affecting renewal.

So, what did you learn? Which lead indicators will you begin to track, or work at improving?

Armed with the data you discover, you can improve your product or service so you gain the edge on your competition.