Product management key performance indicators (KPIs) are targets that product teams can use to guide decisions and judge the performance of ongoing product or business performance.
Armed with this information product managers, who own the scope, vision and resources for a specific product, can know if they are steering the ship in the right direction, which is especially important in a crowded market.
KPIs and their trends can help to identify when progress is being made, when customers may not be responding to a change or feature as expected or to help make decisions about the future of a product.
Some key product management metrics include:
- Monthly Active Users (MAUs)/Daily Active Users (DAUs): The number of different customers that use your product or service within a 30-day window. This number points to your platform’s ability to retain and attract new customers.
- Customer Retention Rate (CRR): The percentage of current customers that continue their subscription from one time period to the next. When a customer fails to continue use, that is counted as churn.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): The average score that customers give when rating their approval of a specific experience, such as a feature, tools or the service as a whole. The score is usually based on a single question with a range of options from “extremely dissatisfied” to “extremely satisfied.”
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures your customers’ overall satisfaction with your company’s product or service and their potential to advocate for it on your behalf.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much it costs for your company to acquire a new customer, including sales costs, marketing, free trials and advertising.
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)/Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): The dollar value of active accounts in a given time period.
Why are product management KPIs important?
As you can see in the examples above, product management KPIs cover a broad set of customer-related metrics, which product teams can use to focus the evolution and delivery of their services.
It is the story that these metrics tell together over time that can help product managers make data-driven decisions about what actions can help define the product lifecycle or assist in pitching new ideas to get the investment and support needed. It can help to show how customers are responding to changes in price, how new features are influencing churn, how new onboarding programs are supporting activation and more. For most of the key questions you have about customer behavior in the B2B SaaS environment, these product management metrics can help define the road ahead.
How can I track product management KPIs?
Tracking product management KPIs can be a huge challenge without the right tools to help facilitate the process. Fortunately, there are some robust customer success platforms out there specifically designed to collect and analyze the metrics that matter for a B2B SaaS company.
Once in place, these platforms can help to:
- Automate data visualization, reporting and data analysis to zero in on key customer segments and/or trends
- Consolidate offline and online data to help create a more comprehensive picture of customer behavior
- Collect key data with APIs from across your enterprise
- Capture customer insights and facilitate communications with internal and external stakeholders
