Scratching your head wondering what key performance indicators (KPIs) your clinic should be paying attention to? We’ve got a list of 10 that can help you get on track. If you’re not measuring any of these today, don’t try to implement them all at once. Pick one or two to work on at a time.

KPI tracking is essential to identify both opportunities for improvement — and to double-down on things your clinic is doing well. Often people approach KPIs with an attitude that they are designed to find problems. However, KPIs can provide valuable insights to success too. Often these successes reveal niche services your clinic should double-down on, or differentiators that you can use in marketing.

Before we dive into the metrics a few tips:

• Make sure your practice has SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based). Before you establish metrics, you want to know what the desired outcome is.
• Audit your PIMS to make sure your system is set up to track the metrics you want to measure.
• Create metric reports or dashboards that update in real-time. KPIs are only useful if you can easily reference them on a daily basis. Also, if metrics are too hard to pull — you’ll never look at them.
• Make sure the entire team understands what the metrics are, what you are looking for, and how to impact them. Metrics can be scary to teams when they are first introduced. Often teams worry that “big brother” is watching them. Instead, share how you are using the data: to create transparency and compliance.
• Practice managers may look at a long list of metrics to keep the business on track, but consider only rolling out three to five KPIs to the broader team.

How many new clients is your practice attracting? If your goals are practice growth you may have more aggressive new client goals. Make sure you’re tracking not only the number of new clients, but the cost to acquire a new customer. If you have a target lifetime value of a client this will help you determine if your marketing budget for new client conversion is on track.

To track this information you’ll need to be able to pull a report of new clients by date from your PIMS and you’ll need a tracking mechanism for your marketing dollars spent.

Client acquisition cost =
Marketing dollars spent over a time period/ new clients over the same time period

Average transaction value or (ATV) measures the average amount a customer is spending each time they visit the clinic. During the pandemic, many clinics reported lower patient volumes due to longer appointment times — yet they reported higher revenue dollars. That’s because their ATV increased. It’s important to track your ATV to identify if your practice should change prices, bring on new services that drive a higher ATV, or increase appointment volume to hit revenue goals.

Many clinics evaluate veterinarian performance by the revenue brought in by their services rendered. In a time of staff shortages, we believe measuring employee satisfaction is as important as measuring production. There are numerous tools to measure employee satisfaction and engagement. Keeping your staff well as whole people impacts their happiness at work and directly impacts patient care and, by proxy, revenue.

Take a deep dive on how veterinarian production is calculated.

Long wait times negatively impact pet owner satisfaction and create internal workflow bottlenecks. If wait times are long, consider implementing digital forms, virtual check-in processes, and streamlined payments to get pet owners in and out faster.

One of the most important metrics to measure —and report to veterinary teams — is client satisfaction. Send satisfaction surveys after every single visit. Here’s why we love surveys:

• They uncover happy clients. You can ask them to write reviews or send in video testimonials.
• They help you address dissatisfaction before people start sharing with their friends or their social media networks.
• They give you data that you can quote in marketing. “Our pet parents give us 4.95/5 stars.”
• They can find hidden problems before they become big, visible problems.
• They help you recognize your team and give praise.
• They can help you see what customers value about your clinic so you can double down on that.

Learn more ways to increase client satisfaction.

Speaking of online reviews… you should keep a pulse on them. As a metric, you can report the number of good, bad, and neutral reviews to track trends. Make sure you also set up Google Alerts with your clinic name so you get a heads up when people are talking about you on the internet.

Looking for more online reputation management tools? Check out our veterinary online reputation monitoring checklist or take a deep dive with our comprehensive veterinary reputation management guide.

It’s cheaper to retain a client than to attract a new one. Calculate your own client retention rate:

Client retention rate = Total number of clients customers over a time period/ Total number of clients

If your client retention rate is low, consider a marketing campaign to encourage your existing customers to come in for a visit.

Revenue is important, but often profitability is a more meaningful metric. Set a target profit margin and measure your profitability over time to identify trends and opportunities to improve profitability, such as inventory optimization and changes to pricing.

Keep track of cancellations and no-show rates. If you notice these rates are high, you can do a few things to course correct:

• Require pre-payment or a deposit for certain types of procedures.
• Implement a proactive appointment reminder system that notifies pet owners of upcoming visits via text and email.
• Implement online booking to allow pet owners to self-serve and select the dates that work best for them.
• Allow for appointment rescheduling a certain number of days out.

It’s no secret that hiring these days is difficult. Track your staff turnover to make sure you correct workplace culture issues quickly.