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Getting employees to buy into documentation can be a struggle, but by documenting even that struggle, you’ll make strides toward creating a culture of success.

Key Takeaways

• Documentation metrics include:
  • Documents created
  • Documents updated
  • Documents viewed
  • Documents deleted

• These metrics are important to achieve greater visibility and improve the customer experience
• Ways to build a documentation culture:
  • Gamification
  • Contests and points systems
  • The stick method
  • Measure the impact
• The Crewhu/IT Glue partnership integrates documentation metrics with employee rewards systems

Your MSP can only keep improving when you have visibility into performance metrics. Among the metrics that matter: Documentation.

Don’t forget that documentation itself is a metric. That’s why MSPs should be focusing on how to create a documentation culture. Documentation can help you improve the customer experience and facilitate long-term success.

Here’s why it matters and how you can use documentation to build your culture and keep growing. We’ll also discuss Crewhu’s partnership with IT Glue and ways they help you use documentation metrics to improve the business.

What are documentation metrics?

Documentation metrics give you valuable insight into what your teams are doing with documents and their current performance. These documents drive productivity and daily operations. Here are some key examples of documentation metrics that you should track:

• Documents created: Measures the percentage of client environments being documented
• Documents updated: Indicates the number of documents edited by your teams, helping you get rid of out-of-date information
• Documents viewed: Shows whether teams are viewing documents and using documentation during ticket resolution
• Documents deleted: Measures the number of documents removed for better organization
• Documentation engagement score: Combines the above metrics to score performance and ensure teams are using documentation daily

As with most metrics for your MSP, documentation metrics deliver valuable information about whether you have the right people in the right seats. They connect with other KPIs, like ticket resolution time, ticket escalation, and ticket completeness to provide a holistic view of the workflow and performance of your teams. Documentation metrics are also directly related to your certification and training initiatives as well as customer satisfaction score (CSAT).

Why is documentation an important metric?

These documentation metrics provide a glimpse into your MSP’s documentation maturity. What does this mean? 

Document maturity tells you how advanced and successful your documentation approach is. When you know this information, you can then make updates and keep improving.

Creating a mature documentation culture helps your MSP deliver an overall better customer experience. When these processes are tightened, customers notice and are more satisfied. And with a better customer experience comes business growth.

How to use documentation as a metric for your MSP

So, what does documentation look like? Here are a few ways you can use documentation as a metric.

1. Gamification

Gamification is one of the most effective ways to motivate teams. It incorporates friendly competition with everyday tasks to boost productivity and engagement. In turn, customers will notice and be more satisfied with their service. 

Gamification can be incorporated to track each of these documentation metrics: Make it a game for workers to compete with one another. Think about incorporating prices, badges, or special bonuses.

2. Contests and points systems

Types of gamification may include team-wide contests or the integration of a points system. You can set a benchmark or goal for a documentation metric each month, like X documents created, and the team members who reach that goal either get a prize or a number of points they can accrue and use later. Create a leaderboard, so team members can see where they stand and be motivated to keep working harder.

3. The stick method

Of course, sometimes you may have to focus more on consequences than rewards systems. This simply means that, if certain benchmarks aren’t hit, a team member could face a negative consequence. While this approach may not feel as fun and positive as gamification, it can help team members take documentation much more seriously. Try it out if contests don’t seem to be improving documentation practices. 

Think of this method just like the points system mentioned above, but in reverse. When a team member takes a misstep, they lose points. So, the team member with the most points left at the end of a given period may still be able to win a prize. 

4. Measure the impact

Documentation metrics may not mean much unless you can connect them to other KPIs for your MSP. They need to work in conjunction with other metrics you’re tracking. For example, if you notice a dip in documents created in a given week, figure out what the cause could be. What other metrics have changed in this period? Is ticket resolution time down? Has your CSAT dipped?

You can also integrate these metrics with feedback. Make sure you have the right plan in place to hear from your customers on a regular basis, which will help you nail down when an issue began.

Integrating documentation metric tracking into your workflows will help you gain more insight into how you’re helping your customers. With this kind of visibility, you can keep improving the customer experience while retaining and motivating employees.

Crewhu and IT Glue partnership

Crewhu and IT Glue are now partnering to make these processes simpler and more effective. IT Glue’s documentation software includes a built-in gamification feature that can be combined with documentation metrics for greater visibility. This helps MSPs identify any gaps and view which team members are engaging with documentation, so they can be rewarded.

This is where Crewhu comes in, a platform for running employee contests using a leaderboard and tools to deliver rewards for hitting preset documentation goals.

To take advantage of this integration, MSPs must decide on the right documentation engagement score for their teams, and each employee’s performance will be measured and rated based on this benchmark. You can even create your own scoring system based on your needs. 

All you have to do to run a documentation metric contest is activate the new Crewhu integration with IT Glue, choose your scoring system, set up your details, and make it live.

Kraft Technology Group saw big benefits from using this integration. They grew 25% to 45% over the last four years, doubling the business without changing much about the number of members on the team. They were able to keep teams on task with better engagement tactics. 

Director of Operations Brian Gray said they focused on “leveraging IT Glue and Crewhu to make sure we were aligning with our mission.” Kraft Technology Group used documentation metrics to measure certifications, training, and employee performance to keep improving the business. The new documentation processes helped them maintain a 99% CSAT.

To learn more about the Crewhu/IT Glue partnership, or to talk to the Crewhu team about our platform, get in touch with us to schedule a demo.