The Monday note, and why it isn’t a dashboard

The first thing we built was a dashboard, because that is what you build. Every client on one screen, a score beside each, colors, a chart. The eleven agencies in our first test group told us it was beautiful. Our own numbers told us they opened it 4.1 times in the first week, 1.6 times in the second, and 0.3 times in the fourth.

Nobody was unhappy with it. They simply did not have a moment in their week that it belonged to.

The moment already existed

What every agency did have was a Monday. Some version of a stand-up, somewhere between 8:30 and 10:00, where the account team goes around the room and says how each client is doing. In nine of the eleven agencies, that meeting ran on memory.

So we stopped asking people to visit a page and started sending them something to bring to a meeting they were already having. One email per account lead, at 8:00 AM in their own time zone. It names the clients that moved, by how much, and why.

What is in it

A note has three parts and fits on a phone screen without scrolling.

1. The clients that moved. Usually one, sometimes two or three. Each has its score, the change since last Monday, and the event behind it in plain words: “three weeks under scope, and Thursday’s check-in was skipped.”
2. The clients that did not. One line: “4 others held steady.” It matters that this line exists. It tells the lead we looked.
3. One button. If a client is flagged, the button opens a drafted agenda for the check-in. If nobody is, there is no button.

What we left out

There is no chart in the note, no ranking of account leads, and no score for the lead. We were asked for all three. We left them out because each one changes what the note is for. A chart makes it something to study. A ranking makes it something to defend. The note is meant to do one thing: tell a busy person which client to call this week.

A quiet week is a one-line email. We argued about that for a while, since an email that says nothing has happened feels like noise. But the agencies were clear. When the note skips a week, they wonder whether it is broken. When it arrives and says all seven held steady, they trust the week it says otherwise.

The dashboard is still there

The renewals view and the signals chart are where you go after the note, when you want to see the twelve weeks behind a number. Opens of those pages went up once we stopped trying to make them the front door. Today the median account lead opens Keepwell 1.4 times a week, nearly always from the note, and nearly always on a Monday.

That is a small number, and we are proud of it. The goal was never for an account lead to spend time in Keepwell. It was for them to spend thirty more minutes a month on the phone with the right client.