Understanding Dimensions — What Savo Measures and How

When Savo analyzes a Signal Session, it's not summarizing the conversation. It's measuring it — scoring specific, pre-defined dimensions against a calibrated rubric. Those measurable aspects are called dimensions.

What a dimension is

A dimension is a measurable aspect of what you're trying to understand. It's defined in advance, before any sessions run, with explicit criteria for what evidence looks like at each score level.

Some examples:

• Competitive Confidence — how strongly a sales rep believes they can win against named competitors
• Psychological Safety — how safe an employee feels speaking up, taking risks, and admitting mistakes
• Career Clarity — how well an employee understands their path forward and what growth looks like for them
• Manager Effectiveness — how employees experience their relationship with their direct manager
• Perceived Ease of Use — how easy a customer found it to get what they needed

Each dimension is operationalized with behavioral signal anchors — documented criteria that specify what a participant would need to say for their response to count as evidence at a given score level. This pre-specification is what makes scores comparable across participants and over time.

The 1–5 symmetrical scale

Every dimension is scored on a 1–5 symmetrical scale:

• 5 — Very High: Strong, consistent evidence at the highest level
• 4 — High: Clear evidence; minor gaps or qualifications
• 3 — Moderate: Mixed evidence; meaningful signal in both directions
• 2 — Low: Evidence leans against the dimension; notable gaps
• 1 — Very Low: Strong, consistent evidence against the dimension

The scale is symmetrical: a 1 is as informative as a 5. Low scores are not failures — they're findings.

Score bands

Savo's reports organize findings into three bands:

• High — scores of 4 or 5
• Moderate — score of 3
• Low — scores of 1 or 2

Abstention: when "no score" is the right answer

If a session doesn't produce enough evidence to score a dimension reliably, Savo abstains — it records "No Score" rather than producing a number. This is an expected and informative outcome. Abstention is not a neutral score of 3. A high abstention rate on a dimension across a campaign can itself be a signal: participants may be avoiding the topic, or the event may need refinement to draw out more evidence.

For how confidence levels work alongside scores, see Confidence Levels and Why They Matter. For how scores are backed by evidence you can inspect, see Evidence Units.