The question
Which changes in need, expectation or experience appear before the conventional performance signal?
A customer can continue using a product while trust is declining. They can appear inactive while their preference remains strong. They can return frequently while quietly searching for an alternative. Visible behaviour and relationship strength do not always move together.
What we want to understand
- How small disappointments accumulate.
- Which changes precede a break in routine.
- How trust can weaken while usage remains stable.
- What people do before they formally leave.
- Which early signals are useful and which are too ambiguous to act on.
- When an intervention repairs a relationship and when it accelerates departure.
A working example
A person still opens the app each week, completes the same task and appears retained. But the task now takes longer. Help content is viewed more often. A competitor is searched for outside the product.
The metric has not moved. The relationship may already have.