🚨 Spot Churn Before It Happens

Welcome to The Ops Digest!

Your weekly hit of automation ideas built for the manufacturing and distribution floor.
We’re here to help ops leaders like you take manual bottlenecks, feed them to AI, and watch them disappear.

This week we’re tackling the churn nobody sees coming, until it’s too late.

Your Biggest Account Just Went Silent

Six weeks ago, their emails got 47% shorter. Replies slowed from hours to days. No more questions about new products.

Last Tuesday, the cancellation hit.

You had 42 days of warning signals. But without the right tools, you were blind.

Some distributors keep running on the turnover treadmill, constantly retraining people who burn out, quit, or get promoted. Others quietly bleed six figures a year fixing order errors (wrong SKUs, bad ship-tos, misread quantities) at $250 a mistake.

The best teams don’t play either game. They hand order entry to AI that never quits, never forgets a rule, and never lets small mistakes snowball into $250K leaks.

Want to see how they broke free from turnover and stopped the hidden costs?
See How Modern Ops Teams Are Running Order Entry With AI →

👋 The $136.8B Silent Exit

US companies lose $136.8B annually from churn they could’ve stopped.

And here’s the kicker: 70% of churn is preventable if you resolve the issue fast.

But by the time a customer complains, they’ve already:

• Priced out 3–4 competitors

• Built the switching business case

• Started moving operations

NPS and surveys? That’s an autopsy, not a diagnosis.

🔍 The 5-Minute Churn Detector (Copy/Paste Workflow)

Use this AI prompt with OpenAI ChatGPT-5, Anthropic Claude Opus 4.1, or Gemini 2.5 Pro:

Step 1: Grab Your Data (last 6 months)

Export these 3 reports from your systems:

1. EMAIL HISTORY (last 6 months): 
   - From Outlook: File → Open & Export → Import/Export → Export to CSV
   - From Gmail: Google Takeout or use Gmail API
   - Keep: date, customer name, subject, message body

2. ORDER HISTORY (last 6 months):
   - From your ERP: Reports → Sales History → Export
   - Keep: date, customer name, products, order amounts
   
3. SUPPORT TICKETS (last 6 months):
   - From your helpdesk: Reports → Ticket Export
   - Keep: date, customer name, issue type, resolution time

4. COMBINE THE FILES:
   - Open all 3 CSVs in Excel
   - Copy/paste into one spreadsheet
   - Sort by customer name and date
   - Save as "customer_analysis.csv"

Step 2: Run this analysis

Analyze customer_analysis.csv for churn risk indicators.

CALCULATE:
- Sentiment trend (% negative mentions over time)
- Response time changes (baseline vs. last 30 days)
- Order frequency decline (% change)
- Support ticket escalation rate

FLAG CUSTOMERS WITH:
- 3+ negative indicators
- 30%+ drop in engagement
- Mentions of "disappointed," "considering," "options"
- New stakeholders suddenly CC'd

OUTPUT:
Customer | Risk Score (1-10) | Days to Likely Churn | Top Warning Sign | Recommended Action

INTERVENTION RULES:
- Score 8-10: Executive call TODAY
- Score 5-7: Account review this week
- Score 1-4: Monitor weekly

🚀 Proof It Works

• Vodafone → 20% churn reduction with AI early warnings

• EchoStar Hughes → 35,000 work hours saved with retention analysis

• B2B SaaS average → 25% higher retention using predictive analytics

• 5% retention improvement = 25-95% profit increase

Your 3-Week Playbook

• Week 1: Set up exports + monitoring

• Week 2: Configure risk alerts in CRM

• Week 3: Test intervention playbooks

Teams that run structured QBRs see 33% higher expansion revenue.

🎯 The Hidden Truth

Your competitors are still waiting for surveys.
You’ll know before the customer even admits they’re unhappy.

Every email is a vital sign.
Every order tells a story.
Every ticket is a warning.

Will you listen before it’s too late?

Want to see how top ops teams are getting orders done in under 30 seconds? Book a free Strategy Session and connect with our team! We’ll walk through your current process, highlight exactly where time and accuracy are leaking, and show you how AI closes the gap. Along the way, we’ll build a live demo using your real orders so you can see the difference firsthand. Let’s Talk.