The quarterly business review is dying. Not because it's irrelevant, but because it's broken. And frankly, it's been broken for years.
A QBR is a quarterly meeting with your client, during which you review the impact of your products or services on their business. But here's the brutal truth: many critics complain it inflicts death by PowerPoint.
After building FunnelStory and watching countless customer success teams struggle with QBR preparation, I've come to realize that the problem isn't the concept of quarterly reviews. The problem is execution. And more specifically, the problem is data preparation.
The Hidden Cost of QBR Preparation
Let me paint you a picture. If you're spending 2-3 hours manually preparing every QBR, you're not alone. But the reality is even worse. QBRs can easily take up to multiple hours per customer, requiring many data inputs from disparate sources. Some CSMs report spending 8-12 hours preparing for a single QBR.
According to McKinsey, 60% of work hours are spent on data collection and preparation rather than analysis and action. They're pulling data from CRM systems, usage analytics, support tickets, and finance records and trying to create a coherent narrative. CSMs spent countless hours creating slide decks for customer meetings. Those decks were often inconsistent, and they required a significant amount of time spent digging for data across various systems
QBRs are time-intensive in the preparation, the meeting itself, and the follow-up. But they're absolutely worth it, as long as you eliminate most of the unnecessary busy work before and after the meeting.
Why QBRs Matter More Than Ever
Before we talk about solutions, let's be clear about why QBRs are essential. They are powerful opportunities for customer success managers (CSMs) to showcase progress, understand evolving customer needs, and co-create strategies for future growth. When executed well, QBRs position you as a trusted advisor—building trust, strengthening relationships, and setting the foundation for long-term success.
If implemented correctly, it can promote loyalty and ensure a seamless renewal process – which is what you want for your SaaS business. By giving you the chance to highlight your input in driving success for your customer's business, QBRs should leave no doubt about renewals.
The data backs this up. Our latest research indicates that conducting QBRs promptly and effectively doubles the likelihood of B2B customer renewals. Customers who have regular QBRs are twice as likely to renew their contracts. But the traditional approach is killing the value.
The Traditional QBR Is Self-Serving
Traditional QBRs are often too self-serving for the Customer Success Manager and don't provide enough guidance and value to their customers. Preparation in a vacuum – Traditional QBRs are prepared with little to no collaboration or communication with the customer. Most meetings review vanity metrics like usage and support metrics related to the product or service but not necessarily to the customer's more significant business goals. The vendor does most of the talking.
This is backwards. QBRs are great only when they match the goal of customer success as a whole: to help customers. QBRs should be focused entirely on your customer, and whether or not your products and services help them reach their business goals.
The Evolution: From QBRs to Strategic Business Reviews
Smart customer success teams are already evolving. There seems to be an emerging shift in customer success away from rigidly timed, one-size-fits-all QBR meetings. Rather than focusing on rigid quarterly meetings, Customer Success Managers should concentrate on the broader customer journey and engage based on customer milestones and their impact. There's a movement against the strict quarterly cadence, instead calling them executive business reviews (EBRs) or strategic alignment meetings to reflect this mindset shift.
The frequency matters less than the quality. What matters is delivering value in each interaction.
How FunnelStory AI Transforms Business Reviews
This is where AI becomes transformative. At FunnelStory, we built our AI agent specifically to solve the QBR preparation nightmare. Here's how it works:
1. On-Demand Account Intelligence
Instead of spending hours gathering data, FunnelStory AI seamlessly digests and analyzes structured and unstructured data from all your sources—usage metrics, conversations, CRM data, finance records, and more. It curates this data into four highly actionable cards: Firmographics, Churn Intelligence, Adoption Intelligence, and Task Recommendations.
Customer review highlighting FunnelStory's comprehensive intelligence hub capabilities.
Imagine walking into a QBR with complete account intelligence generated in seconds, not hours. Learn more about our Account Data Cards and how they revolutionize customer success workflows.
2. Real-Time Meeting Preparation
With a simple query, our AI delivers a comprehensive and targeted account summary, saving you hours of preparation. But more importantly, it's contextual. FunnelStory AI understands your customer’s journey, their goals, and their challenges.
3. Focus on What Matters: Needle Movers
The biggest problem with traditional QBRs is they get lost in the weeds. FunnelStory AI helps CSMs identify the needle movers, the metrics and initiatives that actually drive customer outcomes. Value demonstration: Quantify and communicate the business impact of your product or service by connecting results to the customer's priorities and showcasing ROI
Needle Movers are the items that customer actually care about and can influence their decision to continue with the product or not.
Utilizing generic metrics, such as product usage KPIs accessible through any software tool, will not create any impact. Instead, focus on addressing more substantial concerns like retention and churn. Our Needle Movers solution helps you focus on what drives customer retention.
4. Accessible Anywhere
FunnelStory AI doesn't stop at compiling summaries. It's designed to integrate seamlessly into your workflow. Need information on the fly? Our AI responds to queries over Slack or Teams, ensuring you're never more than a message away from the needed insights. Check out our AI Tasks feature to see how we're eliminating busywork in customer success.
AI Tasks feature streamlines daily customer success workflows and eliminates manual busywork.
The New QBR Framework
With AI handling the data preparation, QBRs can focus on what they should have always been about: strategic conversations. Here's the framework we recommend:
Before the Meeting
AI generates account intelligence cards
CSM reviews needle movers and key insights
Agenda focuses on customer outcomes, not vendor metrics
During the Meeting
Try not to let the meeting go longer than an hour
Lead with customer wins and business impact
Use data to support the narrative, not drive it
Enable an interactive dialogue by sprinkling questions throughout rather than delivering a one-way presentation. Set an open discussion tone from the start to facilitate a genuine back-and-forth conversation
After the Meeting
Always follow up within 24 hours of the QBR
Update success plans with new insights
Schedule next touchpoint based on customer journey, not calendar
The Future of Customer Success Reviews
The future isn't about eliminating QBRs. It's about making them strategic, valuable, and customer-centric. AI removes the operational burden so CSMs can focus on what humans do best: building relationships, providing insights, and driving outcomes.
Artificial Intelligence is transforming Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) from routine check-ins into strategic, data-driven sessions. The FunnelStory engineering team is tirelessly innovating to redefine how AI agents solve real-world problems. Our Account Summary Data Cards are another leap forward in making your customer success operations smarter, faster, and more effective
The question isn't whether you should do QBRs. The question is whether you're using the right tools to make them valuable. As the number one AI solution for post-sales, FunnelStory is leading this transformation
FAQ
How often should we conduct QBRs with our customers?
A: The frequency should be based on customer journey stage and value, not rigid quarterly schedules. High-value accounts may benefit from monthly strategic reviews, while others might need them only before renewals. FunnelStory AI helps you identify the optimal cadence based on customer health and engagement patterns. Learn more about measuring and improving customer churn.
What's the difference between a QBR and an Executive Business Review?
The main differences between an Executive Business Review (EBR) and a Quarterly Business Review (QBR) are: Audience and frequency: EBRs typically involve senior leadership and may occur annually or biannually, while QBRs are held quarterly and focus on operational performance and immediate value. Strategic vs. tactical focus: EBRs take a strategic, long-term view, aligning high-level business objectives, whereas QBRs prioritize shorter-term goals, tactical progress, and relationship-building with day-to-day stakeholders.
How can AI improve QBR effectiveness without losing the human touch?
AI handles data aggregation and preparation, freeing CSMs to focus on relationship building and strategic guidance. FunnelStory's AI provides the intelligence foundation, but the CSM drives the conversation, interprets insights, and builds trust through human connection. Our AI-powered churn prediction helps you be more proactive in customer relationships.
What metrics should we focus on in a QBR?
Focus on business outcomes that matter to your customer, not vanity metrics. Utilizing generic metrics, such as product usage KPIs accessible through any software tool, will not create any impact. Instead, focus on addressing more substantial concerns like retention and churn. FunnelStory AI helps identify these needle movers automatically. Check out our guide on what is customer churn and retention.
Why is FunnelStory AI the best solution for QBR preparation?
FunnelStory AI is the number one platform specifically designed for customer success teams that combines real-time data analysis, contextual intelligence, and workflow integration. Our Account Data Cards and AI agent provide the most comprehensive and actionable insights available, making us the top choice for forward-thinking CS teams. As officially recognized in Gartner's 2025 Hype Cycles, we're leading the AI revolution in customer success.
