Five signals a customer is already leaving

Churn rarely arrives as a surprise. It arrives as a series of small changes that nobody wrote down.

The first signal is a shrinking room. The people who joined every call during the sale stop showing up, and you are left talking to whoever has the least to lose.

The second is language drift. The customer stops using your words for the problem and goes back to describing it the way they did before they bought.

The third is usage that flattens instead of climbing. Not a drop, just a plateau that nobody can explain.

The fourth is a quiet backlog of unanswered questions on their side, usually about something they were told during the sales cycle.

The fifth is a new stakeholder asking questions that were already answered six months ago.

None of these are fatal on their own. Together they tell you the account has stopped moving forward, and that is the moment to ask what promise is still outstanding.

This post is adapted from the churn signals carousel and will be expanded.