14 Data Points that Should Act as a North Star for Your Home Care Agency
Home Care Pulse
To help your agency build or strengthen your data-focused foundation, we’ve compiled a list of the most important data points your agency should be tracking.
With technology at our fingertips, data has become the most valuable tool we collect, calculate, reason with, and analyze to measure progress and success.
Collecting data is the first step in creating a solid data-focused foundation for your agency. You won’t be able to make calculations, reason with, or analyze the data unless you’re collecting it in the first place.
To help your agency build or strengthen your data-focused foundation, we’ve compiled a list of the most important data points your agency should be tracking today. These data points are broken up into four categories: sales/marketing, client experience, operations and recruitment/retention.
You’ll find that most of these data points should be collected on an ongoing basis. As far as reviewing them goes, that’s entirely up to your team. We’ve seen most agencies are discussing and analyzing these data points on a monthly basis; however, some agencies review them weekly or quarterly. It’s up to you.
Before we dive into the data and formulas, here’s how collecting data on an agency-level can be a powerful tool both internally and externally.
Internally, data can be used for things like:
Externally, data can be used for things like:
Sales & Marketing
In the words of corecubed CEO, Merrily Orsini, “Attract with brand and differentiate with data”. Your sales and marketing efforts are essential in growing your business and tracking the right data points can show how successful your marketing efforts really are.
Your inquiry-to-admission ratio will show you how many potentially interested candidates become clients and your client acquisition cost will show you how much you’re spending to attract and bring on a new client.
Inquiry-to-Admission Ratio
Formula: Sum of New Clients/Sum of Inquiries
Client Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Formula: Sum of Sales & Marketing Expenses/Sum of New Clients
Client Experience
Your client experience is the interaction and relationship your business creates with each individual client. Each client is impacted by the people and service you provide for them. In addition to caregivers, this also includes your office staff and management team.
There are various reasons to track data related to client experience. Tracking satisfaction helps you ensure quality care to your clients, and long-term trends over time help you to identify whether you’re improving or need to make changes. Net Promoter Score, meanwhile, has been shown to be highly correlated with the future growth or decline of a business, and is highly indicative of the prospects of your business.
Client Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Relies on one question: “On a scale of 1-10, 10 being most likely, how likely are you to recommend this company to others?”
Formula: Net Promoter Score (NPS) = % of promoters – % of detractors
Client Overall Satisfaction Rating (OSAT)
Satisfaction is calculated by asking the following question to individual clients: “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with the services you’re receiving?”
We highly recommend that, in addition to collecting overall satisfaction, you track satisfaction with various areas of your services, such as communication from office staff, compatibility with their caregiver, and overall ability of their caregiver.
(Learn more about getting your client OSAT scores through a third party.)
Operations
Industry leader and Founder of Home Care CEO Forum, Stephen Tweed, often says, “what gets measured gets managed. What gets rewarded gets repeated.” Agencies that clearly define their metrics and measure what’s most important in their business will continue to push ahead of the competition.
Some of the most important operational metrics you should track include the following:
Average Client Lifetime Value
Formula: (Annual Revenue / # of Clients Serviced) x Annual Client Avg. Length of Service
Client Turnover Rate
Formula: Client Turnover Rate = Sum of clients who stopped services/Average # of clients serviced
Office Staff Turnover
Formula: Office Staff Turnover Rate = # of Office Staff Terminated / Avg. # of Office Staff Employed
Sales Per Full-time Employee
Formula: Sales per full-time employee = Sum of Revenue/Sum of Full Time Employees
Recruitment & Retention
Caregiver turnover and retention are top of mind for nearly every agency owner in the nation. Before you can begin effectively reducing turnover, you’ve got to measure where your turnover rate currently stands and then make sustainable changes in the short-term that resolve the issue over the long-term.
The following data points will help you see clearly how much turnover is affecting and costing your agency. You’ll also find data points that display how satisfied your caregivers are and whether they would recommend your agency.
Your clients and your caregivers can become your best recruiters and your most valuable asset, but you’ll need the data to help you make the correct changes to be able to reduce turnover, retain current employees and recruit new talent.
Caregiver Turnover
Formula: Caregiver Turnover = Sum of caregivers terminated/Average # of caregivers employed
Caregiver Turnover by Lifecycle: 1-90 days, 91-180 days, 180+ days
Caregiver turnover calculated separately for groups of caregivers depending on their tenure with your company.
Caregiver Average Lifetime Value
Formula: (Annual Revenue/# of caregivers employed this year) x Avg. Length of employment for your caregivers = Average Lifetime Value of a Caregiver
Caregiver Acquisition Cost by Recruitment Source
Formula: Total recruitment expenses/# of caregivers hired through 1 given recruitment source in each time period
(Repeat for each recruitment source.)
Caregiver (Employee) Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
Relies on one question: “On a scale of 1-10, 10 being most likely, how likely are you to recommend this company to others?”
Formula: Net Promoter Score (NPS) = % of promoters – % of detractors
Caregiver overall satisfaction rating
Satisfaction is calculated by asking the following question to individual caregivers: “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with your employment at this company?”
We highly recommend that, in addition to collecting overall satisfaction, you track satisfaction with various areas of your services, such as communication from office staff, compatibility with their clients, and quality of training that they’re receiving.
Fine Tuning Your Data Collection
Now that we’ve laid out the data points that should act as a north star for your agency – it’s up to you to begin tracking them or refine the data you’re already collecting.
Take time as a team to review the data you’re collecting and find ways to refine your KPIs to best meet the needs of your clients, caregivers and business in general. We know you’ll already be tracking a handful of these but take into the account your agency’s specific needs and goals to best alter your metrics to achieve the highest success.
For more information on data collection inside each of these five categories, check out the following resources:
Sales & Marketing
Client Experience
Operations
Recruitment & Retention
