In April ten new property enquiries are received and four appointments are arranged. The monthly overview reports an “appointment rate of 40 percent”. In May there are twenty new enquiries and ten appointments. Now the rate is supposed to be 50 percent. That sounds like an improvement. It is still unclear, however, whether the counted appointments even originate from the respective new enquiries.
Our own workshop for Austria and Germany uses fictional cases. It does not explain a universal sales metric, but a concrete assignment question. The procedure can help to professionally prepare an internal report. It does not claim to be an evaluation function of any particular software.
A month contains several case histories
In the model exactly one first confirmed appointment per enquiry is considered. Other messages and postponed follow-up appointments are not additionally counted for this calculation. All considered enquiries are, according to our fictional definition, separate cases.
In April there are ten new enquiries. Two of these receive their first appointment still in April. The other two appointments counted in April, however, originate from earlier March enquiries. The workload of four appointments in April is thus correctly recorded, but does not fully belong to the April intake.
In May a further twenty new enquiries arise. Four of these receive a first appointment in May. In addition, six appointments are confirmed for the still-open April cases. Consequently, May contains ten appointments in total, but only four of them stem from the new May cases.
The monthly work answers a sensible separate question
For planning appointment management the four April and ten May appointments can be important quantities. They describe how many, according to the stated definition, arose in that calendar month. For that purpose assigning them to the month of intake is not the same task.
The error only occurs when this workload is divided by the number of new enquiries without checking and presented as the result for exactly those new enquiries. The numbers then share a month name, but not the same case group.
An overview therefore does not need to discard every monthly value. It should name it accurately. “First appointments arranged in May” is a different statement from “Share of enquiries received in May with a confirmed appointment”.
Start at the intake for the result question
If the office wants to know what happened to the April enquiries, it starts with the ten specific April cases. By the end of April two have an appointment. By the end of May six more have been added. At the second point in time it is eight out of ten, i.e. 80 percent in total.
The two remaining cases at that point do not yet have a first confirmed appointment. That does not automatically mean a final rejection. It is initially the observed current state. Whether the case is actually closed or still open is documented separately.
For the twenty May enquiries four appointments are observed by the end of May, i.e. 20 percent. This number is not readily comparable with the end-May status of the April group: the two intake groups had different amounts of time to develop their result.
Consciously agree a common observation point
For a fair temporal comparison the method needs a suitable reference. This could be, for example, a pre-defined interval from each intake. Which deadline or which observation point is sensible depends on the actual question being asked.
This article does not prescribe a general number of days as an industry standard. What matters is that the rule is understood and applied the same way for both groups. Incompletely observed cases must not be treated unnoticed as definitively unsuccessful or already completed.
With few cases the result presentation should accordingly remain cautious. An additional appointment can strongly change the share. The modelled 80 percent figure does not imply a lasting company performance nor a forecast for the next campaign.
A small evaluation model instead of many personal notes
Our editorial recommendation is to combine the required assignment of intake and the concretely defined event with an appropriate neutral case identifier. Which data may be processed for this and how they remain protected is clarified in the actual context. A public case list with personal property wishes is not required for this.
In a working draft it should be traceable why an event is counted for a particular case. Duplicates, repeated enquiries and appointment postponements need a uniform rule. Otherwise a different double counting can occur despite correct monthly assignment.
The method presented is not an instruction to collect as many new personal data fields as possible. Start with the concrete evaluation question and examine which already available permissible data reference is actually necessary for it.
Two results instead of one false universal rate
At the end of the fictitious case the office has an overview of the monthly workload and a separate consideration of the enquiry intakes with their respective observation status. Both can be useful. Neither should be presented as a substitute for the other.
This explains why more appointments arose in May without hastily concluding a better effect of the new May campaign. The right question is not only “Which month does the number belong to?”, but “Which cases lie behind it and how long were we actually able to observe their result?”