Customer Experience
Silent Churn: The Hidden Cost of Everyday Service Behaviors
By Tamara Betty Asonga
If you live in Kenya, you’ ve likely experienced this. You walk into a shop, a branch, or a service centre and spend five minutes waiting- while three staff members look straight through you. No greeting. No acknowledgment. No sense of urgency.
You don’ t complain. You don’ t fill out the feedback card. You simply walk out and tell yourself,“ Next time, I’ ll try somewhere else.”
That quiet decision, made without confrontation, is what many organizations completely fail to see: silent churn.
Most organizations, imagine customer churn as a noisy, dramatic event- an irate client demanding a refund, a contract abruptly terminated, or a furious review gaining traction online. These moments are easy to see. They come with tension, documentation, and a clear signal that something has gone wrong.
In reality, the most dangerous customer loss doesn’ t look like this at all. It is quiet. It is polite. And in most cases, it goes completely unnoticed until it’ s too late. This is silent churn.
Silent churn is what happens when a customer simply fades away. They stop calling. They stop buying. They stop visiting. No complaints, no confrontation, just a quiet retreat akin to ghosting. And because everything happens under the radar, the business only realizes the loss months later, when sales reports show
Silent churn is what happens when a customer simply fades away. They stop calling. They stop buying. They stop visiting. No complaints, no confrontation, just a quiet retreat akin to ghosting. And because everything happens under the radar, the business only realizes the loss months later, when sales reports show unexplained gaps or renewal cycles come back empty. unexplained gaps or renewal cycles come back empty.
Across Africa, whether in Retail, Telecoms, Equipment Dealerships, Saccos, Hospitals, Banks, or Service Centers, silent churn is perhaps the biggest blind spot in customer experience; and the most painful part... it often starts with the smallest, most ordinary behaviors.
How Silent Churn Begins: The Everyday Moments
Silent churn rarely begins with a major failure. It usually begins with what seems like a harmless oversight.
Maybe it’ s a customer who calls a service line and hears,“ Please hold,” before being transferred endlessly until they hang up. Maybe it’ s a technician who promises to give an update“ tomorrow,” but that tomorrow becomes the proverbial one that never comes. Or a receptionist who greets everyone cheerfully, except the customer who walked in on a particularly busy morning and left without a single hello.
We have all seen situations like a bank where customers toil on long queues in the heat while staff chat casually behind the counter. Or a supermarket where a loyalty cardholder asks for help finding a product, only to be waved vaguely“ somewhere on that side.” Sometimes it’ s simply an agent at a call center sounding bored, robotic, or in a hurry.
None of these interactions are severe
40 MAL69 / 25 ISSUE