Maximize Customer Success by Using the most effective QBR template

Jan 19, 2024

In the world of customer success management, mastering the ability to conduct a quarterly business review, or QBR, is a skill vital to long-term success and vital to the longevity of relationships. Beyond regular business meetings, QBRs deep-dive into performance in the last few months, taking a look at the progress that has been made in multiple quarters or even years.

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unlock the potential of effective and efficient QBRs

QBRs are an essential part of managing business-client relationships In this post, you'll learn about how they can have a significant influence on your company as well as business-client relations, what they should include, and how to choose the best QBR template. Let's get started!

What is what is a Quarterly Business Review (QBR)?

A quarterly business review also known as QBR is a scheduled, 60-minute meeting between the business and its clients, which occurs every 3 months. Unlike weekly, biweekly, or even monthly review meetings, QBRs deep-dive into how the quarter ended. QBRs are typically used to help customer success managers present a summary of progress on critical initiatives and highlight key issues and set expectations for the upcoming quarter and create open discussion about the health of your business relationships.

What is the importance of QBRs?

The business environment is constantly changing; QBRs help you stay connected to your customers and their constantly evolving needs, which is critical for your business's long-term success and relationship. QBRs are the core of this aligning because they offer customer success managers with a systematic approach to maintaining and improving the business-client relationship. By conducting comprehensive and efficient QBRs You can reap many benefits. These include:

Maintaining alignment

As with all successful strategy for business, QBRs start with a base of goals and objectives. However, two distinct individuals are involved in your partnership: your company will be able to define its own goals as well as your client. Both be pursuing their own specific goals.

The QBR can help you assess your relationships and strategies and assess your current goals, and reestablish those objectives for your client. This will ensure that the two parties are in agreement with the goals they wish to accomplish in the future.

As a business This ensures you understand where and what to concentrate your efforts and the client is reassured that the partnership is working to their advantage.

Assessment of performance

Followed by goals and objectives, QBRs typically review past results in the next step. It is beneficial to review previous performance is double.

  1. Monitor progress over time Regularly scheduled meetings allow you to track and measure how you are doing throughout your work relationship providing you with your client a broader overview of the progress that typically is discussed in more frequent meetings.
  2. Identify success factors - Because QBRs assess past performance, you can discern what's working and also what could be improved by improvements, or is best to delegate it in order to improve the performance of others.

These both demonstrate to your client the need for continuous improvement and the goals they have set for themselves.

Find the new possibilities

Like an extension of identifying your success factors They help companies stay agile and adapt to any shifts in market conditions or new requirements of customers that occurred during the last business quarter. In addition to responding to new trends or market shifts, QBR meetings are a opportunity to become proactive.

Analyze trends, review feedback to assess the market's changes. It can reveal under-explored market segments and opportunities for product or service expansion. Further, view QBRs as an opportunity to engage in collaborative brainstorming just as much as a review of the past results. Promoting open and lively communication between business and client will help uncover additional information which might not be disclosed otherwise, allowing you to get to know your customer's needs or requirements.

Enhance your connection

At its core, the idea behind a QBR enhances communication and fosters regular feedback between your client and you. Although the QBR is structured however, it allows for an open and honest dialogue that helps to achieve the alignment we alluded to in the previous paragraph.

Additionally, an open conversation provides you with an important glimpse into your client's satisfaction which will allow you to know where they're happy and where there is room for improvement. Being aware of your customer's satisfaction can also significantly impact client retention in a positive way.

Plan for the future

In the end, when QBRs reflect on the past, they help set the stage for the subsequent quarters of business. The final section of quarterly meetings can present plans for the future or introduce recommendations on next steps.

The QBR should focus on upcoming changes, their expected impact on the business or business-client relationship, and the way they align with or will influence the larger goals and objectives. This focus on the future can help you to determine what measures or KPIs you should be tracking during the next period and also provide a foundation for next quarter's QBR.

Each of these five benefits of a QBR describes precisely how and why a QBR has a major role in the overall success of your business-client relationship--consider them QBR Best practices. Let's take a examine the ways in which an QBR template can empower customer success managers during their planning process leading up to the crucial meeting.

How do I use a QBR template?

A QBR template is a well-structured document that helps customer success managers ensure the QBR is run as smooth and efficiently as is possible, and covers all the essential areas necessary for a productive session.

Finding the best QBR template

Effective QBR plan starts with selecting the correct template. So, here are seven aspects to think about when selecting a QBR template:

  1. Alignment with the objectives mentioned earlier, creating alignment on the goals and objectives of you and your client is essential in the process of creating a QBR. In general, this is the primary goal of a quarterly business review and should therefore be among the primary components in a QBR template. This ensures every item and discussion within the QBR is directly related to the achievement of these shared goals.
  2. The ability to customize -Ideally your QBR template you choose must include all the necessary elements (goals and performance reviews in identifying opportunities, an action plan). But regardless of what the chosen template has it must be adaptable. This means you should be in a position to alter various aspects of the template, regardless of whether they're major components or small elements (like swapping one metric for one).
  3. Ease of use -Choose a template that simplifies the process, perhaps one that has intuitive design elements or built-in guidelines. All aspects of a QBR template should be easy to all those involved, that is, it should be simple for the customer success manager to design and build the QBR as well as be simple for customers to work and follow the QBR both during and following the meeting.
  4. Structure and clarity. Similar to ease of use, a QBR should be clear and well-organized. That means that the sections of the presentation must follow an orderly sequence and are well-developed. Your client shouldn't struggle to understand the flow of the meeting, the data, or your analysis of the data or insights.
  5. Data integration - Based on the size of your business or client as well as the length of your relationship, QBRs encompass a wide spectrum of sophistication, covering everything from a handful of KPIs to numerous detailed reports on analytics and key metrics. In addition to being capable of customizing a QBR template that is tailored to your needs, you should also be able to integrate with critical business tools, effortlessly integrating data flow and analysis.
  6. Feedback incorporation - A good QBR can allow clients to provide feedback. While your business can likely determine how the presentation was accepted, a direct response from the client will avoid any confusion and give you a clear, pointed directions on how you can improve for next time. So, ensure the template has a dedicated section that allows feedback from the client, encouraging an ongoing dialogue for improvement.
  7. The actionable results - Often the conclusion of many QBRs it is the aim to summarise the key findings and conclusions from the study to set deadlines for next-year goals, confirm that the next time to meet, and establish a clear set of steps to follow for both participants in the coming quarter. Try to locate guidelines that clearly define deadlines and responsibilities, as well as making sure that accountability is maintained and followed through for both clients and the business sides.

Comparison of different QBR templates

Finding the right QBR template is difficult, which is why we've put together a list of best templates from popular platforms and evaluated the templates. Below are four QBR templates each of which has distinct benefits and use cases:

Plus' QBR template is an extremely customizable, expertly designed five-part template perfect for conducting an effective and efficient quarterly review. The template suggests that you start by setting goals and objectives, emphasizing aligning as the foundation of QBR achievement. It then flows into a performance review and looking at your customer's engagement levels. It is possible to further efforts to improve customer engagement by using the strategic planning section, highlighting features that align with the goals of your customers. It's time to finish your QBR template by establishing an action plan that details your next steps and your customers.

Key components:

  • The overview and the alignment
  • Performance review
  • Customer health engagement
  • Strategic plan
  • Action plan and next steps

's QBR template is broad and adaptable to a vast array of customers and usage scenarios. Contrary to the other templates included in this collection, this template gives tips and suggestions for how you can modify it to fit your business needs, detailing how to modify it to fit your specific brand's terms and situations. In the end, this template is designed to help facilitate conversations that are meaningful and is an excellent option for any customer service professionals.

          Asana

Its Asana QBR template is a customizable template that permits the user to build a unique QBR agenda. The template prompts users to start by reviewing the performance of the last quarter, emphasizing successes and challenges. After the recap of last quarter the users are asked to address the next quarter's objectives and potential to expand. The agenda template concludes with action items like scheduling the next gathering.

Key components:

  • Previous quarter recap
  • Plans for the upcoming quarter
  • Breakdown of the action item

Asana QBR template Asana QBR template can be a fantastic choice for QBRs that promote open dialogue instead of a presentation-audience model. The template permits an extensive amount of personalization However, in contrast to other templates, such as the Plus template, it doesn't require creators to develop a proper action plan for the next quarter.

          Pitch

The Pitch quarterly review template takes the form of an engaging and simple images. It begins with an overview of last quarter's results which prompts designers to include KPIs and core metrics in the presentation. After this, the template features highlights and issues and then moves to the next step. Next steps are broken down into goals for the next quarter, KPIs, and a calendar.

Key components:

  • Assessment of performance
  • Learnings
  • The next steps
  • Q&A

The logical flow of this template promotes a smooth agenda and allows users to enter their own data without a need to reorganize the templates. Overall, this template is easy to work with and comprehend, making it an excellent alternative for your next QBR.

          Mural

Mural is a graphic workplace platform which allows users to organize their workflows, projects or brainstorming sessions in visualizations. Mural's QBR template is consistent with the nature of the platform and provides a three-step template. In the first step, users are asked to start by defining their goals and expectations for the business-client relationship as well as beyond. The presentation then focuses on the performance of business by listing recent goals, achievements, as well as lessons learned. The final and third section of the template "Evolve," prompts users to refine their goals based on last quarter's performance, and then outline the next steps to follow.

Key components:

  • Aim
  • Measure
  • Evolve

Overall, Mural's QBR template is a highly visually appealing and flexible template. It is ideal for professional who want to take advantage of the fun and engaging aesthetics offered by the Mural platform to bring a fresh flavor to what can easily be boring corporate meetings. The high customization offered by this template might not be suitable for those who require a drag-and-drop-style solution.

Table A comparison of various QBR templates

Template Provider Pros Cons
Plus
  • A complete template that includes all the major components included
  • Highly customizable to create personalized presentation
  • Will require design input
  • does not include the section for feedback or Q&A.
Asana
  • Highly customizable template to brainstorm ideas and prepare for back-end work
  • A platform many businesses are familiar with
  • Primarily, it supports the organization of meetings.
  • It is missing a robust "Action strategy" area for the following quarter
Pitch
  • Professionally polished and professional visual presentation
  • Simple to use template that has an easy-to-follow layout and an emphasis on information
  • may require more design input as opposed to if the creators make a presentation by themselves
Mural
  • A powerful visual component for highly visual businesses or their customers
  • The platform allows for advanced customization efforts for highly customized QBRs
  • is more customizable than other QBR templates
  • The format only contains three loosely-defined key components

  Make sure your clients are prepared for success.

One of the best ways to keep your customers happy is to ensure you're delivering the results they want from your service or product. This requires knowledge as well as more than quarterly reviews of business, Customer Training LMS Software can help in gaining that expertise at scale.

Conclusion and additional Resources

Thank you for taking a look at our quarterly reviews of business with us.

  If you're looking to move on and receive individualized guidance on how to improve your customer satisfaction process with online learning Find pricing as well as a demonstration of Plus, don't hesitate to get in touch with our experts.  

Commonly asked questions

What exactly is a QBR?

A QBR, or QBR, or quarterly business reviews is a strategic thorough meeting which is scheduled every three months. The purpose of the meeting is to present the results of the last quarter, realign over common goals and objectives and identify opportunities and establish an action plan for the following quarter.

How often should QBRs be conducted?

QBRs, as suggested by their name, occur at least once in every quarter, or at least once every three months. The frequency of QBRs allows businesses and its client to maintain alignment over objectives and goals and assess performance on key initiatives while having enough time between meetings achieve significant progress. But, companies in high-speed sectors or industries prone to fluctuation could benefit of more frequent reviews.

What are the main components of QBR templates?

The most important elements of an effective QBR are:

  1. Overview and alignment - Begin your meeting by agreeing on mutual goals and objectives. to ensure alignment between your business and client over key measures as well as performance indicator.
  2. Performance review - Follow objectives and goals by reporting on last quarter's achievements and the obstacles.
  3. Customer health and engagement Take the customer's engagement with your product or service during the quarter of last year to guide your strategy moving forward, improving customers' satisfaction and engagement.
  4. Strategic planning: Plan a strategic plan basing it on the results of the last quarter in setting clear and tangible targets for the next quarter during the closing phase of QBR.
  5. Planning for action and next steps. - End the meeting by presenting a concise and practical plan for the upcoming quarter or a commitment to formulating a plan should the need arise during the discussion that requires changing the initial strategy.

There are no two QBRs can be identical, and the components that make your QBR a success may change between clients or industry to industry and even from season to season. Download your complimentary QBR template right now to begin your QBR plan by using a template to handle a range of variability and your unique needs.

What can QBRs help improve the customer experience?

QBRs help strengthen the relationship you have with your customers by ensuring that you're aligned on strategy and goals and fostering the ability to communicate openly. QBRs can help you evaluate your progress, identify challenges and new opportunities, and develop a customized program of action that is according to your client's requirements.