Dismantling the QBR | Jessica Cohen | TDSU Ep. 51

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Samurai Pizza Cats. You watched that too Rob? No, I'm just quoting you because I wanted it recorded. Samurai Pizza Cats for the win.

Everyone go check it out. They're not a sponsor of the show so we're going to have to cut that out. He's mocking me, he's mocking me.

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What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi? Fresh out the bakery folks, what's happening? Mmm, hot and ready.

Is that what they call it? That's right. And I got my man Rob here. Rob, do you want to say hi? Howdily doodily, liferinos.

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And we've got Jess. We've got Jess here. Jess, do you want to say hi? Howdy folks.

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Alright, alright. At least it wasn't, you know, you stayed within probably your safety net there Jess. I appreciate it.

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But I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Jess, thank you so much for being here.

Do you want to introduce yourself? Absolutely, Dillon. I'm happy to be here. My name is Jess Cohen.

I'm currently the head of CS and Community at Upd8 AI looking to deliver time savings and replacing blank screens using AI to CS and account teams around the world. My background is actually in organizational effectiveness and change management. So it led me to a career in customer success because essentially that's what we're all doing.

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Really helping people improve their organizational practices, whether that be through new processes or new software. That was spicy because you said replacing blank screens. And I imagine that was by design because then I want to ask, what does that mean? What are you replacing it with? But anyway, if you can weave that into the topic of the day, please do.

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But you know why we're here. We ask every guest one question and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So can you hit us with that? Absolutely. I want to dismantle the QBR.

I want to get rid of it. I want to replace it. I want to show us how we can affect change in a much more direct and effective manner.

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Not violent enough. We talked about this, Jess. You want to dispatch the QBR.

So why? Where's that coming from? I mean, I feel like this ebbs and flows, right? Like sometimes we hate it. Sometimes we're like, well, but it has value if you use it in the right way. So tell me what the little voice in your head is.

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Is that my voice still in your head? No, it wasn't meant to be. But if you want to own it, you can have it. The little voice in my head, which is not unlike Rob, is telling me that we are not auditory processors.

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And by we, I mean human beings. No one likes to just be talked at. Everyone wants to be engaged.

Everyone wants to be asked what they think about things. And QBRs have become so rote. And especially since COVID and the before times when they're all online, it's really hard to keep people engaged in an online call for the amount of time it really takes to cover the things you want to cover in a QBR.

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I'm all for the idea of sharing product roadmaps, getting product feedback, going over usage statistics, looking for new use cases and expansion. All of that should be done. But the idea of cramming that all into one 55-minute meeting with someone who you probably haven't seen in the past year and are probably multitasking as you're talking to them, there's got to be a better way to deliver that information.

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That's all. And are you going to tell us that is UpdateAI? Absolutely not. UpdateAI can help you.

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I didn't know. I didn't know. I wasn't being churlish.

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Look, can UpdateAI help you? Absolutely. Do I have dreams of UpdateAI being able to go through your past conversations and look through your stakeholder profiles and say, hey, you have a QBR coming up. Here's what we think you could talk about.

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And at the push of a button, we're going to create a skeleton deck that you can use as a framework. Do I love that idea? Absolutely. But again, this is about replacing the blank screens.

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I want to help you have a starting point. But then you as a customer success manager need to be creative. You need to take that information and deliver it in a way that is going to be effective.

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That might be a full hour-long PowerPoint presentation. But my guess is that it would be better served to be, hey, a 30-minute coffee meeting every month or a dedicated product roadmap session with the right people separated from, here, let's go over your usage statistics, which is separate from, let's talk to the right people who are interested in using this software separately. UpdateAI absolutely helps you with that, but it does not replace you as a human being.

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And these days with rote QBRs, and we all have KPIs and OKRs that say you have to have a QBR every three months, every six months, we're losing that creativity with it. And that's not where I want the customer success profession to go. What's up, guys? It's Dillon here, and you know why I'm here.

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Hat in hand. I got a favor to ask of you. If you like what we're doing, give us a like on whatever platform that you find us on.

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And if you want to know when we're dropping new stuff, give us a follow, give us a subscribe. And maybe best of all, if you want to give us some feedback, drop a comment and let us know what you like, what you don't like, or how we can get better. We want to make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community.

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Thanks so much, guys. I'll let you get back to the show. Such a bizarre KPI for you to have a QBR with a customer every quarter.

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But that's a topic for another time. High-pitched Rob, do you want to jump in? Well, yes. I do, Dillon.

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I think it's funny. You're speaking to a battle that I have with myself all the time, Jess, and one that I was just having no longer than 10 minutes ago. Because I just set out about a half hour ago.

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I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to revamp my QBR template. I'm going to share it with all my clients. I'm going to narrow it down so it's just the bare essentials.

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You know what I came up with? You deleted it. 15 slides. No, I completely screwed up my own activity.

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It was so bad. I often go back to a CSM that I hired once. His name is Mike.

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I've invited him on the show, but he hasn't shown up yet. Mike, I hired him, and it was his first job in customer success. I was educating him on all the KPIs and the lingo and QBRs and whatnot.

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I gave him all the decks and all the scripts and all this and that. He was feeling overwhelmed for a while, and then eventually he comes to me, and he's like, Bob, I got it figured out. He called me Bob.

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He's like, I got it figured out. Well, now you know what you're going to be called for the rest of this episode, not the rest of today. High-pitched Bob.

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His brother actually gave me that name, who I also hired. Anyway, long story short, he's like, I got it figured out. If all I do, I come into work, I call people up, and I say, hey, did you read the release notes? You going to renew? Okay, cool.

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Talk to you soon. See you. He would just hang up the phone.

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He's like, if I just do that, I can knock out my whole book of business in one day. I was like, you know, you're not right, but you're not wrong, Mike. I was kind of just looking at these diametric opposites, me on one side, Mike on the other side, and him stripping it down to the bare essentials.

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I'm like, God, the truth is in the middle here. I'm trying to break it up into mini meetings, like you're saying, Jess, or micro-dosing, as someone called it at a conference once, micro-dosing QBRs. That was a trip.

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Yeah, that was good. I don't have the answer yet, but working on it. That was good.

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Yeah. I got to say, this idea, I can't take credit for this idea. I mean, we've all been having these conversations.

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Recently I had this conversation with an old colleague of mine from Slack, Wade Rocco. Hi, Wade. You should have him on the call too.

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He is awesome, and he's been thinking about this. Slack was one of the first places to give that template. There was a button called the Midas Bot.

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I could press a button, and it just generated a QBR deck. It looked at all of the user analytics. It suggested all the new features that you had to talk.

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It was awesome, and again, it replaced a blank screen, and it gave me more time to think about how to be strategic. But look, if a customer wants to sit down with me in person for a half-day workshop, I'm going to take it, and I'm going to love it, but I'm not going to talk about their user statistics. That's not what moves the needle on expansion.

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Well, it never did, though. I think we just kind of lost the plot along the way. Those are all what we theorized were leading indicators for what we wanted to be the ultimate lagging indicator, which is NRR at a certain percentage point.

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I totally understand that. If their thing is, hey, I need my users to adopt, and you as the vendor have a… I can't. I just can't.

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I've got too low of a register, as they say. If you as the company, the vendor, and your product people have discovered, hopefully with data to back it up data, that adoption is what gets you to that NRR, well, then that is exactly what you should be… Well, I guess you don't necessarily want to talk to your customer about that, but maybe there's a reason. Maybe there's a reason you need to during the onboarding phase, for sure.

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You know what? Dillon, you're absolutely right. You do want to talk about it, but it's the way that you're framing the conversation. I like to think of data as discussion starters, not discussion enders.

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So you come in with the data. You say, okay, we see a lack of adoption in this team. So you don't want to just go and beat your sponsors over the head and say, get them to adopt, get them to adopt.

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You have to use that to then devise a plan and say, here are the three use cases that I think we could implement for this targeted group to get them to use the product more. Can you introduce me to those people who could take on a project like that? Do you have the organizational capacity for that right now? Or would you prefer a break? Those are the kind of conversations I want to set people up for. JP, take us out of here.

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Yeah, I mean, the purpose of the QBR, what is supposed to be the purpose? If you don't talk to a customer at all, the fear is that basically that they were relying on the customer to understand the value that they're being provided. So part of it is the value that they're being provided, but I like to think about it as what really engages people. We talk about CS being proactive and reactive.

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I think you can have a reactive QBR where you're just sort of talking about what people have done, which is okay, or you could be proactive and talk about the value that people could be getting because there's a song that says, more money, more problems, but also more problems, more money. So where are the problems that this customer is maybe headed towards or maybe hasn't thought about? Those are opportunities that are like value landmines that maybe they don't quite see yet. If you have a QBR that's telling them about the value that they're getting is actually more of a footnote.

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Hey, you're getting value from the software because it's like, hey, that's what we're supposed to be doing because you bought it, right? But about the value that you could potentially be getting, I think you get the ears to perk up a bit. I love it. And gentlemen, as I leave you, please tell me that you're going to be printing T-shirts and hats with more problems, more money because that should be our motto everywhere.

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I'd be rich as if that were the case. Anyway, that's our time, Jess. Thank you so much for being here.

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Thank you for bringing Sam the Samurai Cat, and we hope to have you back soon. Absolutely, folks. Thank you so much.

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Have a great day. Bye. See you, Jess.

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You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at lifetimevaluemedia.com. Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at lifetimevaluemedia.com. Until next time.