Measurables indicate how a process is performing or how customer expectations are being met. These indicators are quantifiable, expressed numerically, and can have units of measurement. There are two kinds of these indicators. They are process measurables and result measurables.

It is important in any business to know if you are meeting the expectations of your customers. By defining and tracking result measurables, you are given data that shows areas that your business can improve in order to meet or exceed the expectations of the people that use your products or services.

Result measurables can be defined as the direct measurements of whether customer expectations are being met. These measurables are defined by reviewing the customer expectations and can include things like delivery time, quality, customer service, and so on.

There are some key benefits to result measurables that are worth examining:

1. A link to your customers

Key measurables provide a link to our customers so that we know how our business is meeting their expectations.

2. Numeric value simplicity

Since numeric values are assigned to key measurables, the data is easy to understand and interpret.

3. Tracking

Result measurables can be tracked in order to identify trends.

Result measurables are important to understand for the following reasons:

The expectations of your customers

Understanding result measurables is important because it helps you stay on top of what you need to do in order to satisfy your customer base.

Indicates areas to improve

By having an understanding of your customer expectations, you can target the areas in your organization that need improvement.

Making predictions

By having a solid comprehension of the expectations of your customers, you can make better strategic decisions for the direction of your organization by predicting customer response.

A company wants to have an idea as to whether or not they are meeting the expectations of their biggest customers. The organization decides upon an email survey to be included with each new order from the top 100 companies that it does the most business with. A team meeting is held in order to decide which result measurables the organization would like to track. When the surveys come back and are analyzed, it appears that the organization scored highly on everything except how long it takes deliveries to arrive. In order to address this issue, the organization first looks at its key processes to see if there is room for improvement in its processes to speed up manufacturing. After looking at key processes, the organization begins to look at how long items that are ready to ship sit in the warehouse as well as the possibility of offering expedited shipping.

Here are some key practices to consider when thinking about result measurables

1. Make sure result measurables adhere to the criteria

Measurables should have the following characteristics:

• Measurables should be obvious, in that they should have a clear importance to your organization.
• Measurables should help define your organization’s course of action.
• They should be easy to obtain and easy to understand.
• Measurables should be agreed upon by the team.
• They should relate to performance and be useful in predicting results.

2. Goals

Be sure that all of your result measurables have a goal attached.

3. Key processes

Only focus on improving result measurables after first improving your key processes.

The two types of result measurables are external customer expectations and internal customer expectations. Examples of external customer expectations are warranty returns, customer satisfaction, and delivery issues. Examples of internal customer satisfaction include objectives and strategic goals.

How are the goals set for result measurables?

They can be set through reviewing industry standards, benchmarking, or solely based on customer requirements.

How do you gather the data for result measurables?

Some methods for collecting result measurables are audits and surveys with your customer base.

Tracking result measurables gives us a way to know exactly what our customers expect from us and indicates areas in which we can improve. This, in turn, provides us with another useful tool for providing a better customer experience and engaging in continuous improvement efforts.