Many clients today prefer self-service. 🤖✨
They expect quick answers to their queries, detailed information at their fingertips, and tools to perform tasks independently—such as ordering, scheduling, tracking, or troubleshooting.
Most businesses know that.
Fact check: 53% believe their clients are highly satisfied with their self-service offerings.
But guess what? The average self-service success rate today is just 14%.
That’s because most clients find self-service systems too rigid to deal with the complexities of their issues. In 43% of cases, they don’t find content relevant to their queries.
This is where a well-designed client dashboard can transform the game. In this blog, we’ll dive into everything you need to know about creating client dashboards that deliver real value.
Let’s get started. ✅
How to Create a Client Dashboard (+Examples)
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is a Client Dashboard?
A client dashboard is a personalized digital workspace that enables clients to engage with your business in real time. It provides centralized access to essential resources, such as knowledge bases, project timelines, KPIs, and custom reports, pulling together data from various sources. 📊
Integrated with a comprehensive tech stack, including paid or free project management software, BI platforms, CRM systems, and communication tools, the client dashboard facilitates smooth collaboration across your business ecosystem.
This transparency keeps clients informed on project progress, strengthening relationships by ensuring no critical details are overlooked. The dashboard also boosts resource efficiency by centralizing relevant data and automating updates.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBenefits of Building a Client Dashboard
You might think, “All of this sounds great, but can’t we just stick to email and phone to connect with clients?” Sure, you can. But that’s not going to work if you want to scale your operations efficiently. Building a client dashboard has its perks. You get to:
1. Manage relationships with multiple stakeholders
What if your customer success agents must answer questions from 10 or more stakeholders from each client account?
Isn’t that exhausting in the long run?
When all interested parties have access to the same handy portal with every piece of information available to them, client management becomes much easier and more impactful.
2. Help clients avoid costly mistakes
If your clients are in regulated sectors like healthcare, banking, or manufacturing, offering a dashboard with built-in compliance features is a game-changer. It can help them stay aligned with industry standards, save time and money, and avoid legal headaches.
3. Showcase the value you provide
Let’s say you’re a marketing agency.
You can embed data visualizations in your client’s dashboard, displaying specific metrics like website bounce rate, keyword rankings, and organic CTR. That way, clients can instantly see how your efforts impact their SEO every time they log in.
The more beneficial it is to work with you, the more likely they’ll want to stay. And given that a mere 5% increase in customer renewals can generate more than a 25% increase in profit for you (it’s still true in 2024), creating a client dashboard is a no-brainer.
4. Stand out from competition
Not all businesses offer client dashboards. But the great thing is they’re helpful for any industry.
For instance, as a financial advisor, you could create a dashboard for your clients to track their investments. You can encourage them to pay a premium for this added convenience.
This way, not only will your current clients stick with you, but you’ll also attract new ones who want better control over their new and historical data.
5. Discover innovation opportunities
Over time, the engagement analytics built into your client portal software will give you incredible insights into what you need to offer, improve, or remove from your offerings.
📌 For example, your SaaS clients might want AI-driven tools or custom branding options (like adding their logo) in your product. You can, therefore, innovate quickly based on their feedback and launch solutions before anyone in your industry even thinks about it.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat to Include in a Client Dashboard?
The whole point of designing a dashboard for your clients is to give them all the information they need without asking for it.
Here’s a suite of all the features it should typically offer:
- Contract and agreement tracking: Easy access to review, modify, or digitally sign contracts and agreements
- Document collaboration center: A hub for drafting, sharing, and editing proposals, professional reports, or design files
- Security and access control: Sensitive data protection through multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access control (RBAC), and data encryption
- Communication functionalities: Simplified correspondence with chat, message boards, and email integration
- Event or meeting scheduler: A built-in calendar tool to set appointments, deadlines, and meetings
- Project status overview: Instant visibility into key task milestones, due dates, and deliverable progress
- User-friendly interface: Intuitive design with clear labeling and organized menu structures
- Performance analytics: A snapshot of metrics and KPIs offering insights into overall business performance
- Training library: A repository of how-to guides, FAQs, and video tutorials to support client education and onboarding
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Create a Client Dashboard
Building a dashboard may seem overwhelming, especially if it’s your first time. The best approach is to step back and start from the basics. Let’s break it down.
1. Define your objectives
Before you do anything, think about why you want to build a dashboard for your clients.
What problems do you want to solve for them?
Do they need a way to track projects in real time? Is their pain point organizing all the documents and invoices they receive?
Or do you just want to minimize the strain on your teams when managing clients?
Whatever it is, first ask your clients.
Meet with them, whether in person or virtually, or share an open-ended survey using customer feedback tools. Listen to their thoughts, concerns, and ideas, and compile them neatly in ClickUp Docs.
With features like nested pages, styling options, and templates, you can build a centralized document that captures the “why” and the “how” of your dashboard project.
You can collaborate with your team in real time within these Docs—tagging them, assigning specific action items, and even converting feedback into trackable Tasks.
In addition, ClickUp’s Docs Hub makes it easy to keep all client-specific resources accessible, verified, and searchable so that any team member can quickly locate project-critical information.
💡Pro Tip: You can also have discussions internally to understand the most common queries existing clients often have. This information will shape your dashboard and make it more useful from day one.
2. Define client KPIs
The data gathered in the first step will help you identify relevant KPIs to track in the dashboard.
📌 For example, if you build eCommerce websites for your clients, they’d be interested to gauge the effectiveness of your service and how it impacts their outcomes, from site speed to security measures.
In this case, their key metrics would be page load times, uptime reliability, traffic conversions, and cart abandonment rates. Providing anything else that doesn’t align closely with their business strategy would be a waste.
ClickUp Goals, for example, can be a valuable addition to your dashboard creation process.
Within the platform, you can create measurable goals specific to each client’s needs and break them down into targets, including numerical counts, monetary values, task completions, or binary (true/false) options.
You can also create folders within the platform to track KPIs by categories like sprint cycles, OKRs, weekly scorecards, and any essential goals in one place.
3. Design the layout and user interface
When designing the dashboard experience, prioritize the client’s perspective. Your main goal should be functionality and ease of navigation. You don’t want your clients to hunt for information—they want clarity and simplicity.
Therefore, think about their workflow and ask yourself questions like:
- What’s the first thing they want to see when they log in?
- How can the interface be best ensured to be intuitive for new users?
- What extent of customization do they expect in terms of layout, widgets, or data visualization options?
- Are there any accessibility features (e.g., keyboard navigation, single-screen reader compatibility, or text-to-speech) that should be considered?
As a sales enablement platform, imagine providing clients with a portal that displays metrics in prominent areas—at the top or in a section marked as “high priority.”
Group related metrics logically to improve usability.
For example, data related to customer interactions (e.g., number of follow-ups or response time) can be in one section. At the same time, sales performance metrics (e.g., deals won, pipeline growth, and revenue forecasts) can be grouped separately.
Such structured sales CRM reporting enables your clients to interpret their data at a glance without information overload.
ClickUp Dashboards particularly offer customizable layouts that allow you to design an interface focused on client needs. Using widgets as building blocks, you can add charts, task lists, and status indicators to display relevant information prominently.
For example, suppose clients need quick visibility into project timelines.
In that case, you can include widgets for task deadlines, Gantt charts, or workload views, ensuring that important metrics are always easy to find. ClickUp also supports drag-and-drop functionality for widgets, so you can adjust and refine the layout to suit your clients’ preferences, creating an intuitive interface.
Want to show your clients how you’re accelerating software delivery with specific reporting mechanisms, such as burn up/burn down chart and sprint velocity? Build a Sprint Dashboard with ease on ClickUp. There’s a template for every industry or scope of work.
In addition, color-code sections and grouping options to make data more accessible and visually appealing.
Finally, ClickUp Brain takes your dashboards to the next level by providing instant answers to your questions. Ask AI anything, and it will search across all dashboards in your Workspace, helping you surface critical insights without needing to dig for data manually.
💡 Pro Tip: Use charts, graphs, and visual indicators like progress bars to present complex data. Incorporate dropdowns or tabs to offer deeper insights on demand while keeping the interface clean. Finally, design a layout that adapts fluidly to any screen size, whether viewed on desktops, tablets, or mobile devices.
4. Integrate key tools and services
The value of a client dashboard is directly tied to the accuracy and freshness of the data it displays.
This is why you’ll need to integrate it with their existing tech stack, from visual project management tools, CRMs, and accounting software, so the dashboard gets populated from a wide range of data sources.
For example, a dashboard for a service-based client business might display invoicing data from QuickBooks, web traffic metrics from Google Search Console, and customer satisfaction scores from HubSpot.
ClickUp CRM offers integrations with many tools that enhance data accuracy and connectivity.
For example, you can integrate it with Asana or Jira to centralize project updates and milestones in one dashboard. For productivity tracking, you can opt for Slack, Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams to streamline communication without switching apps.
💡Pro Tip: By integrating APIs and real-time data, you can add alerts or notifications that trigger when certain thresholds are met (e.g., resource utilization drops below a specific number or a critical scheduling error occurs).
5. Prioritize security
Recent years have shown the devastating effects that insufficient security measures can have on businesses.
For instance, in 2024, a major vulnerability in a content management system used by Hathway exposed the sensitive KYC details such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and email IDs of over 4 million customers, leading to expensive damages and severe reputational harm.
This is a stark reminder that a client dashboard can also be a point of entry for malicious actors if not properly protected. Even something as simple as a weak password policy can leave your system vulnerable.
That’s why security features like multi-factor authentication (MFA), role-based access control (RBAC), and data encryption should be a non-negotiable component of your client dashboard.
Sure, you can invite any client into ClickUp as a guest and share the dashboard with them so they can view project updates and collaborate in one place. However, maintaining security is an important part of this process.
You can organize individual client accounts with a scalable hierarchy of Folders and Lists and set granular permissions to control who sees what—including people from your team and external stakeholders.
💡 Pro Tip: Regularly update your security protocols so that user permissions remain aligned with any team roles or responsibilities changes. Let your clients know exactly how their data is being protected. Make security a selling point and build trust.
Summarize this article for me pleaseClient Dashboard Examples: Top ClickUp Templates to Use
You don’t always have to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel when building a dashboard. Many client management templates can save you time and effort while ensuring a professional layout. Below are five excellent dashboard examples from ClickUp that you can use.
1. Agency Client Health Tracker
As an agency, you’d probably be juggling multiple clients. Monitoring their satisfaction levels and project health will always be at the top of your to-do list, but let’s face it—that’s overwhelming.
The Agency Client Health Tracker from ZenPilot, integrated with ClickUp, solves just that.
It centralizes important data from emails to spreadsheets and gives you a clear picture of which clients need immediate support and which accounts are running smoothly.
The template offers features like:
- Built-in activity tracker to keep an eye on client engagement and responsiveness
- Video tutorials to help you set up and customize the layout for your agency requirements
- Eight pre-configured views to view everything, from services rendered and objectives achieved to NPS scores
2. ClickUp’s Client Success Template
Like any other business, customer success should be your focal point. To analyze how engaged and committed clients are to maintaining their relationship with you, leverage the ClickUp Client Success Template.
In fact, it even makes more sense if you’re a SaaS company that wants to ensure clients derive maximum value from the product.
The template gives a comprehensive view of each client’s journey, covering stages from onboarding to renewals while tracking potential risks and performance. It allows you to set clear objectives for them and measure the success of your services against those goals.
With the template, you can:
- Use the Gantt Chart View to visualize project timelines
- Distribute tasks internally to appropriate team members
- Follow up with clients for feedback with email integration
3. ClickUp’s Client Success Collaboration Template
This one’s specifically for aligning sales and production teams that need to coordinate efforts to ensure smooth workflows and timely project delivery.
The ClickUp Client Success Collaboration Template keeps both departments on the same page with shared views, reducing miscommunication and errors during client handoffs, which is a good strategy.
With it, you can:
- Access key tools like Docs for internal notes, Forms for collecting client information, and Boards for mapping out task progress
- Simplify tracking with statuses like Open and Complete so all team members can quickly understand where the account is at
- Set automatic triggers, such as updating Custom Fields when new tasks are created
4. ClickUp’s Quick Start: Client Services Template
Who doesn’t want to close deals quickly and efficiently while managing client accounts, scoping requests, and optimizing resources? Whether you’re a sales rep, a customer relationship manager, or a project head, you need the right client management tools for the job.
And the ClickUp Quick Start: Client Services Template is one such framework you can completely rely on. Though it may initially seem complex to use, it’s beginner-friendly.
Key features include:
- Create tasks and set assignees, due dates, statuses, and more
- Monitor project health with Custom Fields like time estimates, priorities, milestones, and dependencies
- Store processes, resources, and essential information with the Team Wiki
5. ClickUp’s Voice of the Customer Board Template
In a sea of CRM templates, how do you find something that helps you better understand your customers’ needs, wants, and preferences?
Their feedback is invaluable for refining your offerings. But collecting, organizing, and acting on that can be a challenge—not if you use the ClickUp Voice of the Customer Board Template.
With its Kanban-style layout, you gather client insights in an organized fashion and promptly ensure they’re prioritized and addressed by the right teams.
The template lets you:
- Incorporate time tracking, dependency warnings, and tags for prompt issue resolution
- Use custom views such as List, Board, and Start Here to view feedback in various configurations
- Structure feedback from specialized fields such as “Customer Need,” “VoC Source,” and “Solution”
Summarize this article for me pleaseKeep Your Clients Happy and Drive Business Growth With Dashboards
Now that you understand the value of dashboards, they’re more than just nice-to-have tools—they’re essential for empowering clients to make confident, data-driven decisions.
When clients are satisfied with the insights they see in the portal and recognize your contributions, it’s a win for everyone involved. 🎉
Plus, with tools like ClickUp, you can easily create the best client dashboards to meet specific needs. A major benefit is its extensive library of ready-to-use templates, making it simple and fast to get started.
Sign up for a free ClickUp account today and start elevating client satisfaction. 🚀
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