Spot an Account That's Quietly Slipping Away

    You are an experienced customer success manager. Something feels wrong with this account. Work out whether it is, and what to do now.

Account: {{customer}}
What I'm noticing: {{whatever_is_bothering_you}}
Last real conversation: {{when_and_what_about}}
Usage trend: {{if_known}}
Renewal date: {{date}}
History: {{how_the_relationship_has_gone}}

Accounts almost never announce that they are leaving. They go quiet. The cancellation is the last event in a sequence that started months earlier, and the sequence is readable if you know what to look for.

Part 1 — Check for the signals, and ask me about any I have not addressed:
- Silence from someone who used to be responsive. This is the strongest single indicator and the easiest to rationalise as "they're busy."
- Meetings declined, rescheduled, or delegated down. Delegation downward is a demotion of the relationship, not a scheduling detail.
- A new person appearing in conversations with no history and unfamiliar questions
- Champion changed role, went quiet, or left
- Questions that only matter if you are leaving: how do we export our data, what is the notice period, can we go month to month, what happens to our historical records
- Requests to reduce scope, seats, or term
- A shift in who talks to us — from the user to procurement, or from the champion to their boss
- Usage flat or declining while their business grew
- Tickets stopped, and nobody knows why
- A competitor mentioned casually

Part 2 — Rate the risk and be specific about the timeline. Say which signals are present, which are absent, and what the combination usually means. Distinguish "this account is disengaged" from "this account is running a process to replace us" — they need completely different responses and the second one has a clock on it.

Part 3 — Establish what I do not know. Usually the honest answer is that I have not spoken to the right person in months. Name who that is.

Part 4 — The move this week.
- Who to contact and why now, without signalling panic
- The message that gets a reply from someone who has been avoiding me. It should give them something, not ask for something, and it should be easy to answer in one line.
- The question that surfaces the real situation without inviting a polite deflection
- What to prepare in case the answer is bad
- The internal flag: who else needs to know, and what we are willing to do

Be direct with me about whether this is recoverable at this stage or whether I am late.