This is a guest blog contributed by Stephanie Neale, CEO of Blind Zebra, a sales and client success training company for B2B pros.
It’s a Tuesday morning. You’ve grabbed your coffee and opened your inbox. The first subject line you see is “Cancellation.” It’s from one of your top accounts.
[Cue the shoulder slump and exasperated “ugh.”]
Once the initial frustration wears off, your mind begins to play back all your interactions with the customer.
Are you surprised they churned?
Oftentimes, you’re not. There are patterns and universal reasons for cancellations. If you don’t have a process to identify at-risk customers before they send the dreaded cancellation email, then this is the place to start. Follow these three steps to take a more proactive, systematic approach to engaging and saving customers before it’s too late.
Step 1: Do your homework
If you haven’t already, pull as much historical churn data as possible. Go to school on why customers left in the past. Don’t stop at just one reason per account. Attempt to find all factors that contributed to their cancellation.
Make a master list and boil it down to the top seven to nine reasons customers leave. Common cross-industry examples include:
- Primary point of contact, champion, or contract signer leaves
- Client doesn’t see value in the product
- Client is not an ideal fit
- Client’s company is acquired or gains a new primary investor or partner
- Economic downturn occurs at the national, industry, or individual level
Step 2: Identify at-risk indicators
We have a phrase at Blind Zebra: “you know before you know.” That’s especially true in the world of Customer Success.
Now that you have a list of cancellation causes, it’s time to take it a step further. Look for the red flags that signify churn is on the horizon. These at-risk indicators can include:
- Less timely payments (delayed pay or overdue accounts)
- Declining or sudden drops in usage
- LinkedIn notification that your primary contact has a new job
- Industry news predicting detrimental market changes or funding news
- Slow or no onboarding progression
Step 3: Develop an at-risk process
Now that you’ve identified your at-risk indicators, how do you put them into action to help prevent churn?
If you have a Customer Success platform, these lists will begin to inform your customer health scores. If you don’t have a Customer Success platform, you can create your own mechanism for tracking churn signs.
A quick play-by-play on an at-risk mechanism could look like this:
- Define churn reasons and signs. Get specific but don’t overthink it. You should have no more than seven to nine at-risk indicators.
- Train the CS team on all at-risk indicators. They should now diligently and proactively look for these warning signs.
- Create a repository to capture at-risk indicators as they pop up. Each CSM tracks the date an account is added, the account name, and MRR. When they see a warning sign, they select an at-risk indicator from a drop-down of defined reasons. This can be done using your Customer Success platform. If your company doesn’t have a platform, a simple spreadsheet will do the trick.
- The final part is an ACTION step. The CSM defines their plan of proactive action to address the potential churn risk.
- Set a standing team meeting (some teams have called this the “least exciting meeting of the week”) to go over the list of at-risk customers on a regular basis. The spirit of the meeting is shared accountability and brainstorming around the best ways to help clients through challenges that may otherwise lead to churn. Accounts stay on the list until the red flag is resolved or they churn.
- Track the results. Update the process. Rinse and repeat.
This is not a foolproof guide to eliminating all churn. Some accounts will still churn. Some should churn (a topic for another day). But we’re positive that employing a proactive at-risk strategy will prevent losing some accounts that would have churned.
Some things you should know and consider: a primer from ChurnZero
What are the most common cross-industry reasons customers leave?
Across industries, customer churn is often driven by similar root causes: failure to realize value, poor customer experiences, internal changes, competitive alternatives, and declining engagement. If customers don’t clearly see ROI, encounter friction with your product or support, experience leadership changes, or get tempted by new tools, their loyalty weakens. Even silence can be a warning sign. When engagement fades, risk rises. You can stay ahead of all of these warning signs in ChurnZero’s one-page customer profiles.
How to spot churn before it happens?
Proactive customer success teams focus on leading indicators like declining usage, changes in support behavior, skipped success milestones, and negative sentiment. A drop in logins, missed check-ins, or unaddressed onboarding tasks can all hint at dissatisfaction. Internal customer changes, like staff turnover or restructuring, are also red flags. The earlier you catch these cues—especially with the help of health scores and alerts—the more time you have to intervene effectively. ChurnZero’s Engagement AI provides a behind-the-scenes look at what customers want and why.
Training the CS team on at-risk indicators
Your CS team needs to go beyond reading data—they need to interpret signals, understand root causes, and act with confidence. Training should focus on real customer examples, scenario-based exercises, and clear response playbooks tied to specific churn signals. Embedding these behaviors into team routines, like pipeline reviews or QBR planning, helps make risk detection and response second nature. With the right structure and support, CSMs can learn to spot and address churn before it’s too late.
