Do you have enough information to truly understand your customers? Do you have quick and easy access to that information? Many things vie for your attention every day – from budget projections and important client meetings, to driving the sales and marketing efforts. All of these areas have one thing in common: you need accurate information about your business to make good decisions. Accurate data about your customers in particular can give you a better understanding of your market, customer satisfaction, and customer preferences and buying habits.

Most Title and escrow companies possess customer data that could be extremely beneficial, but in many companies, that data is not being used to assist management. If that information is difficult to access or hidden away in spreadsheets or outdated systems, managers and decision makers are not afforded the opportunity to really understand the business and make changes to increase revenue, reduce expenses or improve operations.

Does your company harbor information that could make you more effective and improve your decision-making? With this in mind, here are six areas where you may be able to uncover a gold mine of data in your company.

1. Are clients taking advantage of non-revenue bearing products from customer service or marketing, without bringing any revenue-bearing orders to our company? If so, which ones? If you have accurate information from customer service, you can have a good conversation with an agent about bringing more business your way. Here are the KPI’s to track:

• # of customer service touches per month
• # of property profiles/deeds ordered per month and by whom
• Monthly customer service orders ranked by agent

2. How are your marketing dollars being spent – are you getting a return on that investment? Which customers do you spend the most on, and how many orders do they bring you? Some KPI’s to pay attention to:

• Marketing expenses MTD/YTD by agent
• Expenses vs closed orders by agent
• Expenses vs revenue by agent

3. Open vs closed orders by percentage. Which agents are opening orders (causing the upfront expense on your end) vs closing orders?

• Agent Closing Percentage year to date
• Rank agents by closing %, highest to lowest
• Best/worst performers

4. Who are my best/worst performing clients? Sometimes it can be surprising to find out who your best/worst performing clients are. This is important information to know, especially if you can track this over time to develop a performance history. This data can alert you to problems early, when you still have time to resolve them.

• Open/closed orders year to date/month to date
• YTD customer orders compared to previous year

5. Ranking agents by category: prospects, new customers, existing customers

• How many new customers did you acquire this month, last month?
• Is the sales/marketing team reaching out to prospects, or only current/existing clients?

6. 360 degree customer view: if your CRM system (customer relationship management), or Escrow software allows you to graphically display multiple metrics about one client on the same screen, you can use this in many ways. If you have a meeting with a key client, use this to prepare yourself with the client’s recent order history. How are the orders trending for the year to date? If all of the orders were placed many months ago, is there a reason they haven’t brought any new business your way, are they unhappy for some reason?