I recently saw someone promoting “valuable” Customer Success metrics, and one of them was the number of QBRs their team had conducted.

Let’s put aside the obvious problem, there are only four quarters in a year, but what does this statistic tell you even if you met with every customer quarterly? There’s not a single company on the planet that benefits from knowing how many QBRs were completed last month. It’s a vanity stat.

I’m not saying the concept of a Quarterly Business Review is inherently bad. But how we track them, and more importantly, how we conduct them, is broken.

During my time at Google, I was asked to conduct several QBRs. After following the traditional template, one thing became obvious. They weren’t just unproductive; they were painfully boring. After one session, I pulled a few of our customers’ executives aside and asked, “Did you find this valuable?” Behind closed doors, the answer was always the same: No.

So why were we doing them?

After one or two rounds, the meetings quietly disappeared. No one missed them. (I suppose this is the reason for the metric.) Once the onboarding dust settled, no one saw value in reviewing the past or sitting through a disguised sales pitch. It felt like we were performing a ritual for our benefit, not theirs.

I scrapped the old format and designed something new. The session focused on being strategic, forward-looking, and customized to each account. It wasn’t about cleaning up past mistakes or pushing products. It was about co-creating opportunities.

Over time, I developed multiple formats, some of which are outlined below. But still highlights the real issue: No single model works for every customer. What resonates with one team won’t land with another. The key is flexibility, relevance, and a genuine commitment to helping customers move forward.

Tracking QBRs as a performance metric focuses on an organization’s internal ego, not the customer’s evolving needs or values. It prioritizes quantity over quality, completion over comprehension, and action over alignment.

And even beyond the flawed metric, I’d argue that the standard QBR format itself is essentially pointless.

What Is a QBR (and Why Is It Still a Thing)?

At its core, a Quarterly Business Review is a meeting, typically led by a Customer Success Manager, where a vendor walks the customer through performance metrics, product usage, a recap of support tickets, a roadmap preview, and occasionally, some thinly veiled upsell slides.

It’s a structured PowerPoint pitch disguised as a partnership conversation. The format is backward-looking, vendor-centered, and rarely designed to uncover forward-thinking innovation or real human outcomes.

Yes, there are exceptions. But most QBRs follow a rinse-and-repeat agenda, prioritizing slide progression over strategic progress.

Typical Agenda:

• Welcome & Introductions | 5 min
• Review of KPIs and Usage Metrics | 20 min
• Support Ticket Summary | 10 min
• Roadmap Preview | 10 min
• Renewal/Upsell Discussion | 10 min
• Q&A / Wrap-up | 5 min

Typical Metric:

Traditional meeting format focused on past performance, usage data, and vendor updates, such as QBRs held.

Try a QFR Instead: Quarterly Future Review

If you’re going to meet quarterly, make the future the focus.

A Quarterly Future Review (QFR) flips the intent. Instead of summarizing the past, you co-design the next chapter. What new initiatives is your customer exploring? What capabilities are they trying to unlock next quarter? Where are their internal priorities shifting, and how can your team support that evolution?

A QFR doesn’t just review; it strategizes. It doesn’t end with KPIs; it starts with aspirations. It positions your company as a co-pilot rather than a scorekeeper.

Agenda:

• Welcome & Strategic Framing | 5 min
• Business Objective Shifts | 10 min
• Upcoming Initiatives | 15 min
• Partnership Opportunities | 15 min
• Joint Action Planning | 10 min
• Recap & Next Steps | 5 min

Suggested Metric:

Future Growth Trajectory – Measures whether customers expand their internal goals, initiatives, or use cases with your platform over time. Not tied to your revenue but their aspirations and momentum.

Start With the Customer. Always.

Companies love to say they are “customer first,” but in practice, few are. Here’s one example. We call it a “Quarterly Business Review” instead of naming it for where the focus should be—the customer. By leading with “customer” in the name of the activity, we create a subtle but significant shift in focus.

That’s why I’ve always emphasized the term Customer Success. It exists to serve your customers. If the goal were sales, we’d call it Sales Success.

Too many vendors confuse activity with value. Customers don’t care about your processes. They care about progress.

The question isn’t “How many QBRs did we deliver?”

The question is, “How many customers made progress because of us?”

Customer Success is not a compliance function. It’s not marketing support. It’s a strategic growth partner. When you track activity instead of outcomes, you train teams to prioritize volume over impact. That’s how QBRs devolve into check-the-box meetings instead of meaningful conversations that create change.

Try a COR: Customer Opportunities Review

What if the goal wasn’t to “review the business,” but to “place the customer first” and identify new opportunities?

A Customer Opportunities Review (COR) is built on curiosity. You walk in with questions, not answers. You listen first. You seek to uncover unmet needs, competitive friction, or emerging gaps that your product could help close.

It’s a discovery session disguised as a strategy session. Not because you’re selling. But because you’re designing new forms of customer value.

The conversation isn’t about what happened. It’s about what’s next.

Agenda:

• Welcome & Check-In | 5 min
• Review of Industry/Market Shifts | 10 min
• Unmet Needs & Pain Points | 15 min
• Brainstorm New Solutions Together | 20 min
• Commitments and Experiments | 5 min
• Summary & Follow-Ups | 5 min

Suggested Metric:

Customer Momentum Score – A qualitative and quantitative blend of initiative velocity, stakeholder engagement, and solution activation. Are they accelerating toward their goals or stalling?

Stop Reviewing. Start Planning.

The word “review” implies a post-mortem. Why not make it a planning session instead?

The best customer conversations aren’t reactive. They’re creative. The best Customer Success leaders don’t just surface data. They surface insights.

Replace the QBR with a Customer Strategic Session (CSS). This is where the real work happens, on a whiteboard, workshopping, innovating. You co-develop ideas, anticipate change, and experiment with different models.

Strategic sessions should feel like working meetings, not stage presentations. And when done right, customers leave energized, not exhausted.

Zoom Out: Focus on Your Customer’s Customers

Let’s go deeper. Your customer isn’t the final destination. Their customers are.

Your real value lies in how well you can improve the experience of the people you serve. Whether it’s internal employees, end-users, or consumers, they’re the ones who ultimately define your success.

This could also be looked at as a Consumer Experience Session? Focus the conversation on how your product or service helps your customer’s audience thrive. That’s where loyalty is built.

When you center on the end user, you elevate the relationship from vendor to partner.

Agenda:

• Vision Alignment & Framing | 5 min
• Internal Initiatives & Goals | 10 min
• Co-Design: Feature/Application Use | 20 min
• Planning Strategic Experiments | 15 min
• Outcome Mapping & KPI Selection | 5 min
• Scheduling Next Collaboration Step | 5 min

Suggested Metric:

Innovation Contribution Score – Measures how your team has contributed to the customer’s innovation roadmap, whether through ideas implemented, features adopted, or strategic pivots influenced by your partnership.

Why Quarterly? Why Not Continuous?

This is mostly a redundant question. The main reason why it’s quarterly is because they suck and it’s hard to get anyone in the room to care about the meeting. The quarterly cadence is arbitrary. It’s a hangover from financial reporting structures, not human behavior.

Customer problems don’t follow a calendar, and innovation doesn’t schedule itself in 90-day cycles. So why not meet when it matters?

Move to a continuous engagement model, a shorter, more focused monthly sessions. Replace the “big quarterly reveal” with ongoing alignment. Anticipate, iterate, and act.

The benefit? You reduce the need for “catch-up” meetings, stay relevant, discover issues earlier, and build momentum.

Stop Selling. Start Leading.

Let’s be clear: Customer Success is not a sales function. It should never be responsible for selling, whether through upsells, cross-sells, or renewals. When you tie CS to a quota, you dilute its purpose and compromise its impact.

Customer Success exists to unlock potential, fuel transformation, and help customers realize long-term value. Its power lies in authenticity, partnership, and trust. The second a QBR shifts into a sales pitch, that trust erodes. You’re no longer a strategic ally.

Outcomes, value creation, innovation, and opportunity planning should never be considered selling. When CS professionals are pressured to “sell,” they lose the objectivity that makes their insights credible. Maybe we treat “selling” as a forbidden word in the CS lexicon.

Stop obsessing over renewals and start focusing on reinvention. Every customer conversation should be a roadmap to what’s possible, not a retrospective report or revenue extraction tool. CS is about progress, not pitch decks.

The Motivational Art of the Possible

When done well, a customer session becomes a meaningful moment for your company. It transforms into a shared space where possibility takes shape, where imagination is sparked, where goals are reframed, and where action begins. What customers remember isn’t the metrics or the slide deck. They remember how the session made them feel. Did they feel seen? Did they feel supported? Were they inspired by what comes next?

If your customer leaves the room more energized about the future than when they entered, then the session has delivered real value. Traditional QBRs rarely create that kind of experience. But with the proper focus, you can. Let go of outdated formats, design conversations that matter, and lead your customers into what’s possible.

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Chris Hood is a customer-centric AI strategist and author of the #1 Amazon Best Seller “Infailible” and “Customer Transformation,” and has been recognized as one of the Top 40 Global Gurus for Customer Experience.

To learn more about building customer-centric organizations or improving your customer experience, please contact me at chrishood.com/contact.