The Essential Guide to

Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs)

QBRs strengthen partnerships between your business and your customers.

They foster relationships between your executives and your customer’s executives.

They give you a chance to highlight the ROI of your product and reinforce your value to your customer.

QBRs open up honest discussions about your customers’ overall health and what you can do to maintain and improve that status.

QBRs help reassure you that your customer will renew their contract or subscription once it expires.

They demonstrate to your customer that you’re serious about providing ROI and that you expect to do so within a 90-day period.

A QBR without a strategy is a waste of everyone’s time. It also puts you at risk of churn. Create an agenda and make sure all attending parties receive it well ahead of the meeting time. A focused agenda will set expectations and make it easier for customers to craft their most important questions or points of discussion ahead of time.

QBRs are a chance to put ROI on display and help your customers realize value. That’s why ROI should be a centerpiece of these meetings. To determine what ROI to focus on, ask yourself, “Why did our customer purchase our product in the first place, and over the last quarter, how well have we fulfilled that need?” Present numbers and data points that demonstrate the value you have delivered in that time period.

This is the perfect opportunity to revisit the mutual success plans that you crafted with your customers at the beginning of the engagement. Track your progress, adjust timelines based on new goals or learnings your customers provide, and consider what else is possible based on the goals you’ve already reached.

Keep the conversation personalized to that specific customer, the goals they’ve outlined, and what is possible for them based on what you know about their product adoption and usage. Spend the most time during this part of the QBR so that you know exactly how to deliver value and guarantee renewals, adoption, and expansion.

Companies love to see how well they’re doing in comparison to their competitors. If you can correlate that success to your product using hard metrics, they’ll be eager to continue doing business with you. Ensure that you’re noting what sticks out to your customers, what questions they ask, what metrics they discuss so that your sales and marketing organizations can use that information to drive expansions and upsells. While this may not be the time to make those upsells, it is important to share the knowledge learned in each one and provide any identified actionable insights.

Lay out important goals for the next quarter. In some cases, this might be a good time to bring up expansion opportunities or new products and add-ons that will help the company achieve its goals. Be sure to confirm the goals with your customers, outline who will be responsible for the various tasks associated with those goals, and any other important details.

Remember, these meetings must be strategic value-adds for your customers. Simultaneously, they must outline to your CSMs where the customer wants to go, how to get there, and any opportunities in the future that they should communicate to the broader team.

Immediately after the QBR, the CSMs should transfer all important notes to that customer’s record and tag all important team members. The new context will update their customer health score, which should also be shared amongst hte larger group. Provide your most insightful data in the form of a customer health index (CHI). Not sure what a CHI is or how can you calculate it? Don’t worry. That’s all covered in the next section.

Product usage depth describes how much your product a customer uses. If your company offers multiple products, it may also mean how many products your customers use.

To measure the breadth of product usage, dig into how much the customer’s company uses your product. In this case, it can be helpful to determine if the company has multiple departments or functions and if all of those roles use your product. If they don’t, ask yourself if departments that should be using your product aren’t.

Engagement considers how often customers interact with your product and how they use your product. At the same time, you may want to decide if the customer is an advocate for your product. After all, if they are using your product often, they’re probably willing to promote it.

Customer feedback, surveys, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) are excellent tools to gauge your customers’ satisfaction and gather insight into your product experience.

Support usage can reveal red flags in your user’s experience. If the customer has submitted a large number of tickets, they could be growing frustrated with your product. But, if the customer hasn’t submitted any tickets at all, it could be a sign that they aren’t using your product very frequently—and that is a precursor to churn.

If the customer is providing valuable product feedback, it’s a sign that they’re committed to your partnership. It shows that the customer is investing in your product, which means the customer sees a future with your company as a partner.

Your customer’s age represents the length of time the customer has been using your product. If a customer has been with you for a long time, it’s a sign of satisfaction.

Creating and calculating CHI scores may seem like a big job. However, it’s well worth it when you consider how useful scores can be both for you and your customers. It’s also worth noting that software such as Gainsight CS will help you define and calculate your CHI scores instantly. In all cases, these scores help you keep a finger on the pulse of customers, and they can be a powerful asset to bring into your QBRs.

If possible, steer clear of in-depth discussions about anything negative. Highlight successes rather than dwelling on any shortcomings. That said, you should give the customer the opportunity to provide honest feedback. That way you’ll have the opportunity to assure the customer that you can solve any issues or problems they have experienced.

Resist going on the defensive if the customer brings up any issues or challenges. Again, focus on the positives, and turn conversations about problems into conversations about solutions. Remember that this is an opportunity to find new valuable features to add to your product map to expand your customer base and increase upsells if you start to see themes in these conversations.

By setting a time limit on your QBRs, it motivates you to keep the meeting tight and focused. As a general rule of thumb, try not to let the meeting go longer than an hour.

Don’t leave the meeting without scheduling the next QBR. This shows the customer you intend to follow through on everything discussed and that you will deliver results by the time you meet again.