← Help center

Define KPIs about your customers

A KPI is a question about a customer, answered from their conversation in the phase they are in now, such as "How close is this customer to buying?". A KPI is asked only for customers in the phases you pick for it. KPIs only measure: the assistant never sees a KPI's answer, so it does not change the assistant's replies or any automation.

Admins manage KPIs on the KPIs tab of Admin: select New KPI, add a ready-made one, or select Edit next to a KPI. Adding, changing, trying, archiving, restoring and deleting a KPI needs permission to manage the customer table; without it the tab shows the KPIs read-only, and you can still see what a change would cost. You can also ask the Consultant to add, change, archive, restore or delete one; it files a proposal, and nothing changes until an admin approves it (see consultant-proposals).

What a KPI contains

Every KPI reads the same history: the customer's most recent messages in the current phase, up to a limit Yapper sets for all workspaces. Anything older is not taken into account.

Every KPI is answered from its own answers plus one more, "cannot tell", for a conversation that does not settle it. You do not set that up, and no option or level can be called "cannot tell". When the conversation shown does not settle the question, the KPI reads Unknown. A "no" because something never came up counts only when the whole current phase fits in the history; if older messages fall outside it, that answer is Unknown.

Answers

Every active KPI is a column of the CRM page's customer table, with one current answer per customer: the answer, Unknown when the conversation does not show enough yet, or Not assessed. A KPI's answer for a phase reflects the conversation up to the moment the customer moved on from it. See kpi-answers for when customers are assessed and how to read the answers.

Trying a KPI first

The KPI editor's Try it on customers box assesses a draft before you save it: pick a sender, tick up to 5 of its customers and select Try it. The box stays dimmed until the draft above it is complete. The Consultant can do the same before it proposes a KPI. Each customer's current phase is assessed and the answer, or Unknown, is shown without saving anything. Only customers whose conversation you can read are assessed, and only while their conversation with that sender is open; a customer whose conversation is closed is listed as having no open conversation. Trying a KPI never makes a customer tracked, so it costs nothing. Trying a KPI needs the same permission as changing one, for you and for the Consultant acting for you.

Ready-made KPIs

Two built-in KPIs, listed under Ready-made KPIs on the KPIs page, can be added as they are or adjusted afterwards. While adding one you choose its name and phases; its question and levels can be changed once it is added.

Adding one gives your workspace its own copy. Your changes apply to your copy only.

When the dashboard is in Spanish or Portuguese, a ready-made KPI shows in that language: its card, its question, its answers and their criteria, in the editor and in the CRM table, and the name you start with is translated. Until you change its question or answers, the KPI keeps Yapper's built-in wording and every member sees it in their own language; once you change them, your wording is what everyone sees.

Versions

Changing a KPI's question, options or levels creates a new version of it, and earlier versions are kept. Renaming it or changing its phases does not create a version. The KPI list and the editor show the current version, and the editor says when saving will create a new one. After a new version, customers show Not assessed until they are assessed again.

Limits and cost

At most 10 active KPIs can cover any one phase (each phase of a playbook has its own limit), and a workspace can hold 50 KPIs in total, archived ones included. Archiving a KPI keeps it and its versions and frees its place under its phases' limit; restoring it counts against that limit again. While one of its phases already has 10 active KPIs, Restore is unavailable and the archived KPI names that phase.

KPIs are charged per tracked customer in each billing cycle, not per KPI or per assessment, so adding a KPI to a phase that already has one does not change what you pay. A customer is tracked when they message you while in a phase with at least one active KPI, and is charged once per billing cycle, as a lead or as a client. A client is someone you've been talking with for over a month who keeps writing, or who wrote on 3 or more days in the last 30, counting the days they wrote in any phase of any playbook; everyone else is a lead, which costs far less. A lead who becomes a client during the cycle is charged the difference, and a client stays a client until the cycle ends. Your messages and the assistant's never track anyone, and neither does a customer who stays silent. After a customer writes, their KPIs are assessed again about 5 minutes after their last message, at most once an hour (see kpi-answers). The charge appears as Customer KPIs on the Usage tab, with the number of clients and leads tracked in the cycle (see billing-and-credits).

While you add or change a KPI, the editor's Estimated cost shows, for each phase it touches, its active KPIs now and with your change. A phase that already has an active KPI shows that what you pay does not change. A phase that gets its first active KPI shows how many of the customers who wrote while in it in the last 30 days count as clients and as leads (here, a client is one who wrote on 3 or more of those days, in any phase), and what tracking them comes to for a billing cycle. A phase left without an active KPI stops tracking its customers from their next message. The Consultant shows the same estimate before it proposes a KPI, and so does the approval card.

Deleting a KPI

Only an archived KPI can be deleted: archive it first, then select Delete next to it under Archived KPIs and confirm. Deleting removes it from your KPIs for good, along with its column in the customer table, and frees its place under the workspace's limit of 50 KPIs; it cannot be restored. Its versions and the answers already recorded for your customers are kept, so earlier assessments still say which question produced them.