Why Your Customers Are Tired of Waiting for Power BI Reports

For businesses that rely on customer data — whether in sales, customer success, or product teams — generating accurate and timely customer reports is critical. Reports help track customer health, measure performance, and identify opportunities for growth. But as one company recently shared, the process of creating and managing customer reports is often more frustrating than insightful.

The pain of customer reporting

A customer success leader we talked to described how their team relies on dashboards and reports to track customer engagement and retention. Their team needs to deliver weekly and monthly reports to both internal stakeholders and customers.

“Our customer success team needs to generate reports for clients every week. These reports cover product usage, customer satisfaction scores, and renewal likelihood.”

The company started using Power BI in attempt to provide this reporting service

“We embed Power BI into our platform so customers can see performance trends in real time and access self-service reporting.”

At first, this solution seemed to work — but over time, they realized that reporting had become a core part of the customer experience. Customers started asking for more detailed insights and customizations, but Power BI couldn’t keep up with the growing demands.

Where Power BI fell short

1. Manual effort – Generating reports still required combining data from multiple sources, cleaning it, and formatting it before it could be shared. This created a significant operational burden.

2. Slow turnaround – Every time a customer requested a new metric or a different data cut, the data team had to manually adjust the dashboard or report — creating delays and frustration.

3. Inconsistent reporting – Even small changes to data sources or report formats often led to inconsistencies, causing confusion and eroding trust in the data.

Ultimately, Power BI’s embedded solution wasn’t scaling with the business — or with customer expectations. Customers wanted more control, faster insights, and greater flexibility — but Power BI’s rigid structure made it difficult to deliver.

The hidden costs of Power BI for customer reporting

1. Development overhead – Every time a customer requests a new report, a developer needs to adjust the Power BI setup, add new filters, or reconfigure the dashboard.

2. Limited customization – While Power BI can display complex data, customizing reports to meet different customer needs often requires manual coding and adjustments.

3. Poor user experience – Embedded dashboards don’t always align with the product’s UI, making it harder for customers to navigate and interact with the data.

4. Scalability issues – As customer needs grow, the reporting framework becomes harder to scale, leading to bottlenecks and slower report generation.

“Our customers started asking for more flexibility — they wanted to filter data differently, see new metrics, and customize reports to fit their needs. But every time we tried to adjust the Power BI setup, it required developer support and took days to implement. It became clear that the reporting process wasn’t scaling with our business.”

How AI-powered analytics solves these challenges

An AI-powered automated reporting solution can eliminate many of the headaches associated with customer reporting. Instead of relying on embedded dashboards that require ongoing developer support, an AI-driven approach allows for faster, more flexible, and more scalable reporting.

1. Automated report generation

AI tools can automatically pull data from multiple sources, clean it, and generate customized reports — without manual intervention. Reports are automatically formatted and updated in real time, eliminating inconsistencies and saving time.

2. Conversational reporting

Instead of searching through static dashboards, customers can interact with reports directly using natural language. AI-powered tools allow customers to:

• Ask follow-up questions about the data (“What caused the drop in Q2 revenue?”)

• Get real-time insights without needing to consult a data analyst

• Drill down into specific metrics and explore trends dynamically

3. On-the-fly visualization

AI tools don’t just provide answers — they generate customized visualizations that make sense for the question being asked. If a customer asks for a breakdown of customer churn by region, the AI will automatically generate the appropriate chart or graph.

4. Reduced back-and-forth

Because customers can ask questions and generate insights independently, the back-and-forth between customers and the product team is reduced. This allows the product and data teams to focus on higher-value work instead of answering repetitive requests.

5. Consistent, scalable reporting

AI-powered reporting solutions can handle growing data complexity and customer demands without needing to redesign dashboards or adjust configurations. The system continuously learns from user behavior and data patterns, improving insights over time.

From static reports to dynamic customer insights

Customer reporting isn’t just about presenting data — it’s about providing meaningful insights that drive action. Embedding Power BI might seem like an easy solution, but it often creates more problems than it solves.

An AI-powered reporting tool transforms customer reporting from a reactive, manual process into a dynamic, automated system that scales with your business.  

✅ Customers can chat with reports and explore data directly

✅ Visualizations are generated automatically based on the type of data and question asked

✅ Insights are available in real time — no waiting on developer updates

✅ Reporting scales without needing manual reconfiguration

Instead of spending hours creating customer reports, teams can focus on acting on insights — improving customer satisfaction, identifying opportunities, and driving growth. If customer reporting has become a bottleneck, it might be time to consider how AI-powered automation can make it faster, easier, and more effective.