A $60,000 lesson in customer success.
Eight years. That’s how long we’ve been paying a vendor $60,000 annually. Eight years of being what most B2B companies would call a “good customer” — we paid on time, didn’t complain much, and frankly, we were probably easy to forget about.
But … we’ve been using their product half as much over the past year. Our engagement has quietly dropped off a cliff. Usage metrics that once showed consistent activity now tell a different story. And guess what? We’re not renewing.
The kicker? Not a single person from their team has reached out. Not once.
No one asked about the decline in usage. No one checked in on our success. No one even seemed to notice that a customer who’s generated nearly half a million dollars in revenue over eight years was slowly fading away.
We didn’t complain. We didn’t demand meetings. We just… moved on.
And that’s exactly the problem.
The Myth of the Squeaky Wheel
Most B2B companies assume if customers aren’t complaining, they’re happy. If they’re not demanding attention, they don’t need it. If renewal conversations aren’t contentious, everything’s fine.
This is one of the most expensive myths in B2B software.
The customers who complain aren’t your biggest churn risk — they’re engaged enough to fight for a better experience. They care enough to push back. They’re giving you a chance to fix things.
It’s the quiet ones you need to worry about. The ones who just… stop using your product as much. The ones who find workarounds. The ones who start looking elsewhere … but never tell you about it.
We were that customer. For eight years, we were that customer.
The $60,000 Question
We walked away from a $60,000 annual commitment, and the vendor still has no idea. Zero visibility into our declining satisfaction. No early warning system. No relationship deep enough for us to even bother complaining.
The only customer success reach out we’ve had in fact in the past 18+ months was about upsell.
So we didn’t think our feedback was worth giving. We didn’t believe they’d listen or act on it. So we just decided to leave.
That’s not just a customer success failure — that’s a relationship failure. A trust failure. A fundamental breakdown in understanding what your customers actually need.
The Warning Signs You’re Missing
Looking back, the signals were everywhere:
Usage metrics declining month over month — Someone should have noticed. Someone should have cared.
Fewer support tickets — This isn’t always good news. Sometimes it means customers have given up trying to make your product work for them.
Radio silence — When previously engaged customers go quiet, that’s not peace. That’s resignation.
Reduced feature adoption — We stopped exploring new capabilities because we were already planning our exit.
Delayed renewals discussions — We weren’t eagerly planning the future with this vendor anymore.
Every one of these signals was flashing red for months. But in a world obsessed with MRR and growth metrics, the slow fade of customer engagement gets lost in the noise.
The Real Cost of Customer Success Theater
Here’s what I suspect happened: this vendor has a customer success team. They probably have dashboards and health scores and quarterly business reviews. They probably talk about being “customer-centric” in every board meeting.
But none of that mattered because it wasn’t real. It was customer success theater.
Real customer success isn’t about checking boxes or following playbooks. It’s about genuinely helping the customer … be more successful. It’s about noticing when something changes. It’s about caring enough to ask uncomfortable questions.
When a customer who’s been with you for eight years starts using your product 50% less, that should trigger alarms. That should prompt phone calls. That should matter. But it didn’t.
The Compound Cost of Silent Churn
Losing us isn’t just a $60,000 hit. It’s:
- $60,000 in immediate lost ARR
- 8 years of relationship equity down the drain
- Potential referrals that will never happen
- Word-of-mouth damage
- The compounding cost of customer acquisition to replace us
But more than that, it’s a signal of systemic problems. If they missed our decline, how many other customers are quietly slipping away?
What Actually Retains Customers
After eight years and half a million dollars spent, here’s what would have kept us:
Proactive outreach when usage declined — A simple “Hey, we noticed you’re using the platform less. Everything okay?” would have opened a conversation.
Regular relationship check-ins — Not sales calls. Not upsell attempts. Genuine “How are we doing?” conversations.
Investment in our success — Understanding our business, our challenges, our goals. Being a partner, not just a vendor.
Responsiveness to feedback — When we did share concerns over the years, acting on them quickly and decisively.
Evolution with our needs — As our business changed, helping us adapt rather than assuming we’d figure it out ourselves.
None of this is revolutionary. It’s just basic relationship management. But in SaaS, basic relationship management is apparently revolutionary.
The Founder’s Blind Spot
If you’re a B2B founder reading this, ask yourself: How many customers like us do you have? Long-term, seemingly stable customers whose usage is quietly declining? Customers who’ve stopped complaining not because they’re happy, but because they’ve given up?
Your NPS surveys won’t catch them. Your health scores might miss them. Your customer success metrics could be blind to them.
The only way to find them is to actually look. To care. To build systems that flag declining engagement and trigger human intervention. To create relationships deep enough that customers will tell you when something’s wrong.
The Path Forward
For the vendor who lost us, it’s probably too late. We’ve already signed with their competitor. We’re already planning our migration. We’re already eight years deep into a new relationship.
But for every other SaaS company, this is your wake-up call:
Instrument everything — Usage trends, feature adoption, support ticket patterns, email engagement, everything.
Act on declining engagement — When metrics drop, humans should respond. Fast.
Build real relationships — Know your customers as businesses, not just accounts.
Make feedback feel valuable — Create environments where customers want to share concerns.
Invest in retention like you invest in acquisition — The cost of keeping a customer is always less than replacing them.
The Bottom Line
We didn’t leave because the product was broken. We didn’t leave because of price. We didn’t leave because of a competitor.
We left because no one cared enough to notice we were leaving.
In a world where customer acquisition costs are skyrocketing and growth is getting harder, that’s a luxury no SaaS company can afford.
Your best customers shouldn’t have to fight for your attention. They shouldn’t have to complain to get care. They shouldn’t have to threaten to leave to matter.
They should matter because they’re already there, already paying, already trusting you with their business. That should be enough.
For us, it wasn’t. And for a $60,000 lesson, that’s the most expensive silence your company will ever buy.
