Dashboard Narrative Review (Delivery)

Dashboard Narrative Review (Delivery)

1. 01

   Freeze the data pull 24 hours before the client call

   Set a fixed cutoff timestamp so every number in the deck traces to the same refresh. Live dashboards that update mid-meeting invite the client to spot a discrepancy you cannot explain.

2. 02

   Reconcile platform totals against the client's own source of truth

   Pull spend and conversion figures from the ad platform, the CRM, and the billing system, then document any variance above 3% with a one-line cause. Unattributed AI referral traffic is a common gap: segment chat.openai.com, perplexity.ai, and gemini.google.com as distinct sources rather than letting them collapse into direct.

3. 03

   Retire reach-first metrics before the next budget cycle

   Replace impression and reach headline tiles with attention, creator performance, and incremental sales measures. Media-savvy buyers planning 2027 spend already read reach as a legacy KPI.

4. 04

   Write the three-sentence narrative before touching chart formatting

   State what moved, why it moved, and what the agency is doing about it. If a metric cannot support a sentence, it belongs in an appendix, not the top of the dashboard.

5. 05

   Add one competitive context tile per client

   Share of voice against a defined 3 to 5 competitor set turns an isolated growth number into a market position claim. Configure the competitor list once and hold it stable for at least 90 days so the trend line means something.

6. 06

   Assign a named reviewer who is not the report builder

   A second pair of eyes catches mislabeled date ranges, currency mismatches, and stale integration tokens. Budget 20 minutes per account; the cost of a wrong number in a retainer review is far higher.

7. 07

   Log the narrative and the questions it triggered

   Keep a running record of what the client asked after each report. Recurring questions signal a missing tile or a metric the dashboard should surface automatically next month.