Stop Counting QBRs. Start Counting Decisions.
The CS Theater Tax
Customer Success teams adopt QBRs and Success Plans for the right reasons.
They want an earlier risk signal.
Cleaner renewals.
Better exec alignment.
Fewer surprises.
Then something shifts.
The Theater Tax: time spent producing artifacts that don’t change customer decisions.
A tool becomes a mandate. The mandate becomes a KPI. The KPI becomes the job.
You still get meetings. You still get decks. You still get “plans.”
But your signal gets worse, your team gets cynical, and you accidentally train people to optimize for checkboxes instead of outcomes.
Your CSMs already know this. They’re just not saying it out loud.
This post is the fix.
Here’s how to redesign KPIs so you get control and signal without forcing your team to perform.
Why This Happens (Even In Good Orgs)
If leadership cannot confidently answer:
Which renewals are at risk?
Why are they at risk?
What is the plan, and is it working?
Who owns the next move?
When will we know the risk is cleared?
They reach for something measurable and universal: More QBRs. More success plans. More activity.
It feels like rigor. It feels like governance.
But “volume” is a poor substitute for “confidence.” And it creates predictable failure modes.
The 3 Failure Modes Leaders Accidentally Create
1. Mandates without segmentation
Enterprise motion applied to every account turns into busywork.
CSMs stop thinking. They start shipping.
Customers feel it too:
meetings with no purpose
decks that could be sent to any client
“reviews” that are vendor-focused, not customer-focused
2. Volume metrics with no quality gates
When “a QBR happened” can mean anything, people optimize for the easiest definition of “done.”
That’s how you get:
30 slides, zero decisions
A call with no executive, labeled “exec alignment”
A success plan that is a feature checklist with no outcome, no owner, and no date
3. Confusing executive alignment with calendar events
Executive alignment is not “we had a meeting.”
Executive alignment is:
A decision was made
A tradeoff was agreed
A timeline was confirmed
A risk was accepted or mitigated
Budget path got clarified
If none of that happens, it’s a status meeting wearing a suit.
One Real Example (Anonymized)
A VP at a Series C SaaS inherited a “process-first” CS org where QBR count was a top KPI.
On paper, “activity” looked great. In reality, renewal risk still surfaced late because QBRs rarely produced decisions, and success plans had no owners or dates.
They didn’t remove QBRs.
They removed QBR count and replaced it with decision output, risk retirement, and next-step velocity, the three metrics we’ll define in the next section. If you want the upstream fix, the Year 1 habits that prevent this are here →
The result was immediate: fewer decks, fewer zombie meetings, and cleaner renewal control.
The Rule That Fixes This
Measure the customer decision you want, not the artifact you produced.
If you want renewal control, measure renewal control.
If you want exec alignment, measure exec alignment.
If you want risk reduction, measure risk reduction.
Not the number of decks logged.
Rituals are tools. KPIs are levers. If you confuse them, you train performance art.
The frameworks above will sharpen your thinking.
What’s below saves you the build: the full KPI swap, tiered cadence model, manager rollout playbook, plus the audit, a downloadable Decision Log and Scorecard, and a 2-week implementation plan.
Exactly as you’d ship it internally, that part is for members.
Built to give you cleaner renewal visibility and earlier risk signal, in less time than it takes to build the templates.
One example: a Tier 1 QBR that ends with “renewal path confirmed + expansion hypothesis approved” counts as 2 decisions.
If your team is already doing the work, this is how you stop paying for theater.