Data points to watch, when should you intervene, and how to avoid engagement issues

Bad Matches and Unresponsive Participants

A key data point we suggest keeping an eye on is whether or not your participants have had their first meeting with their mentoring partners yet. This, along with the comments, will tell you whether a participant in your program is having trouble or is unengaged and unresponsive. 

Also, keep an eye out for 1-2 ratings on the MQS or Post-Meeting Surveys. This usually means either something has gone wrong, or someone isn’t responsive. 

These data points mean that some form of intervention needs to happen. For starters, you may want to reach out to both parties to find out what the issues are. From here, you may need to re-match them, or manage the unresponsive party by marking them as unavailable or removing them from the program.

Learn more about MQS (Mentoring Quality Score) and Post-Meeting Surveys

Learn more about how to troubleshoot bad matches

How to mark participants as ‘Unavailable’

How to remove participants from your program

Advice from our Customer Success team:

Gain a better understanding of your engagement from MQS:

"Reviewing participant activity via 'Loop Activity' might not always be the best way to get an idea of how your program engagement is going as they could be communicating outside of Mentorloop therefore the activity might not always be accurate. A better measure would be using their MQS survey responses - you can gain a clearer idea on their mentoring journey as they provide in real time feedback and comments."

Sentiment

As your participants progress, you should have a steady amount of incoming Sentiment data. If the amount your program receives starts slowing down, it might be a good time to check in with participants, just to wake them up a little bit. 

Sentiment data also tells you how your participants are finding their journey so far and their thoughts on their matches in general. So you can use Sentiment as a good temperature check for whether the general experience in your program is positive.

Learn more about your Sentiment dashboard

Advice from our Customer Success team:

Check your Sentiments regularly:

"As soon as you start to notice data within the sentiments tab, it would be a good idea to include this in your program management process. At least once every two weeks to get an idea of how participants are going and be able to lend a helping hand to those that need it."

Avoiding Engagement Issues

Launch some preemptive strikes to give your program the best chance of avoiding engagement problems.

• For Always-On programs, it’s good to do a regular cleanup of inactive participants. This is especially important if Self Matching is enabled as this allows you to save participants from requesting matches from those that are unengaged and inactive. 
  
• For Cohorts or On-Off programs that allow participants to stay in as it relaunches, it pays to include opt-out options at the end of each run. Giving your participants the option to not commit to another program can reduce the chances that you’ll have unengaged participants when you relaunch. 

If you do find that you’re in a bit of an engagement slump, check out our 5 Easy Ways to Increase Mentoring Program Engagement.