Most teams try to improve customer experience by answering faster. That helps, but it keeps you in a reactive loop. If you want calmer weeks and healthier renewals, manage to three leading indicators instead: deflection, time to value (TTV) and on-time approvals. Together they tell you whether customers can help themselves, whether they are actually getting value and whether work is flowing without hidden blockages.

Below is a straightforward way to define these metrics, instrument them inside a simple client portal and use them to run your week.

The three metrics that change behaviour

Deflection
Deflection is the share of questions that are resolved by self service rather than back and forth. In practice that means the customer finds a clear answer in your knowledge base or gets a useful response from your portal assistant, and no ticket or long email chain is needed afterwards. Deflection does not mean “we hid the contact button”. It means the right answer was easy to find, right next to the work.

Time to value (TTV)
TTV is the number of days from the invite to the first meaningful outcome. “Meaningful” must be defined up front. For a data tool it might be a successful import and the first saved chart. For an agency it might be the first approved creative. Choose something observable that a sponsor would recognise as real progress.

On-time approvals
On-time approvals is the percentage of approval steps that are completed by their due date. Most delays come from unclear ownership. If approvals live on a page with an owner and a date, and they are recorded with a timestamp, you will see exactly where work slows down.

How to instrument this in a client portal

You do not need heavy tooling. Give each customer a shared Space, publish a visible plan, and keep files, tasks and answers in that one place. Clients can open it with a password-protected link, so there is no account friction. Then:

For deflection
Write short, job-focused articles inside the Space and make sure the first line states the solution. Let your assistant answer from those pages and cite sources. Count a deflection when a question leads to a page view or assistant answer and does not create a task afterwards. If a question does require action, convert it to a task and exclude it from deflection on purpose. That keeps the metric honest.

For TTV
Create a “First value” task with a clear definition. When it is done, the timestamp is your TTV. If you sell to different segments, keep one definition per segment. The number should be simple enough to show on a status page without explanation.

For on-time approvals
Move sign off out of email. Create approval tasks with an owner and due date, and keep them visible to both sides. Your on-time rate is completed on or before due date divided by all due in the period. Trends matter more than absolutes. If the rate improves, your delivery will feel smoother and you will hold fewer status meetings.

Targets that make sense for a startup

Early on, pick conservative goals and improve them every month.

• Deflection: start at 20 to 30 percent and aim for 40 to 60 percent as your knowledge base matures.

• TTV: cut whatever your current median is by a third. If you are at 15 days, aim for 10.

• On-time approvals: get to 80 percent quickly. Anything lower will feel like sand in the gears.

The point is not perfection. It is a weekly rhythm where these numbers nudge real behaviour.

A weekly operating cadence

Monday
Review the three numbers on one page. Call out two deflection gaps where an article would have prevented a question. Assign owners to write or fix them.

Wednesday
Nudge overdue approvals with a short, polite comment in the Space, not an email. If a due date was unrealistic, adjust it and note the reason.

Friday
Check TTV for all new customers. If someone is drifting, publish a short plan on the status page that shows exactly how to reach first value next week and add two clear tasks with owners.

This cadence is light, repeatable and visible to the client, which builds trust.

What “good” looks like in the wild

A small SaaS team invites a new customer into a Space that already has a one-week plan, two access tasks and a short guide for the common import error. By mid-week the client has connected SSO and uploaded sample data without asking for help because the answers were next to the work. On Friday the team posts a First Value note with a short video and creates a one-click approval task. TTV is five days, approvals are on time, and the only questions came through the assistant and were answered with links the client can reuse. The next Monday, the team adds the import guide to the “Start here” section because the search logs showed it was popular. That is deflection improving by design, not by luck.

Pitfalls to avoid

Treating deflection like a vanity metric will bite you. Count only resolved questions that did not need action and keep the assistant grounded on your own content. Be ruthless about the definition of first value. “Had a good call” is not value. “Ran the first report and shared it with finance” is. And never let approvals disappear into threads. If a decision has legal or delivery impact, it deserves a task and a timestamp.

Why these three numbers belong together

Deflection lowers noise and saves time on both sides. TTV proves your product or service is delivering what was promised. On-time approvals keep flow predictable so you do not burn margin chasing sign off. When you track all three, you move from reactive support to proactive success. Status emails get shorter, meetings get fewer, and QBRs are built from links and evidence rather than memory.

If you want a simple way to run this play, use a portal where clients open a password-protected Space, see the plan, complete tasks and read answers without asking for access. That one change will make these metrics easier to track and much easier to improve. For a clean setup that does exactly that, start with dokky.io.