You care deeply about client satisfaction.

You don’t want them to slowly disengage and have their opinion of your capabilities drop. This leads to lower client growth, or worse, you don’t retain their business.

So, what are the early signs of disengagement?

In preparing our upcoming State of AI Account Management 2025 report, we found some interesting data.

We’ve identified the top risk signal categories that Kaizan’s AI discovers anonymously, and each are preludes to low CSAT scores and lower client engagement.

Every client relationship has it’s own rhythm created by the clients objectives, time frames and stakeholders involved. When that rhythm shifts, quietly but persistently, the risk of dissatisfaction accelerates.

1. Decision-maker talk time falls below 10% for three consecutive months.

When senior stakeholders stop engaging in calls, it often signals that they’ve mentally stepped away from the strategic partnership. In managed service relationships, accounts that remain actively engaged at the senior level tend to achieve significantly higher alignment, trust and expansion.

This clearly supports the idea that a sustained drop in decision-maker engagement is a red flag, and to quantify this, you should be looking at your stakeholder coverage and questions being asked: is this driving engagement or falling on deaf ears? The number one signal to lower CSAT and engagement from clients could be directly connected to decision-maker talk time.

2. Over 50% of communication time is spent on reporting (too little on ideation, strategy or problem-solving).

This is an interesting stat. Your clients expect you to be experts, helping them understand the market and guide them to success. Reporting is therefore crucial, but too much and the strategic relationship suffers. What we see across the anonymised data is when conversation categories are overwhelmingly about ‘Reporting’ and a teams’ time was dominated by deliverable read-outs and reporting walkthroughs, clients consistently had lower engagement on all metrics after three months.

This matches broader research: knowledge workers in enterprise settings spend significant portions of work time on “maintenance” rather than momentum work; reporting, updates, meetings. Thus starving the strategic nature of the relationship, which was the original reason to work together.

3. Reporting inaccuracies are mentioned three times more often than any other low-sentiment topic.

Mistakes in data or deliverables happen, and may seem operational, but they are fundamentally trust issues. If that stat is wrong, what else could be? In the low-engagement and low-CSAT anonymised accounts, the overwhelming Low Sentiment Moment is categorised as Reporting Inaccuracies being raised by the client.

If month-to-month this is your leading friction point with the client then retention and growth risk is inevitable. In client service environments, reliability, accuracy and consistency of advice strongly predict client loyalty and referrals.

What to Do: Actions for Client Service Leaders

>> Proactive decision-maker coverage – systematically track decision-makers’ likes and dislikes, what makes them tick, what questions to ask, and ensure your stakeholders are mapped for regular talk time with the clients’ decision-makers. Do everything you can to get them to engage with you.

>> Shift the interaction mix: reduce reporting-focused calls; replace them with strategic “what we’ve seen in your market” sessions. Proactively share insights. Make sure you free up call time for value-add dialogue. Ideally, rewatch meetings back with your team to practice proactive strategic stakeholder management.

>> Automate Reporting QA: if you’re not already using AI for reporting QA, introduce checks and alerts for mismatches, inconsistencies or delays. Treat data-accuracy issues as a relational risk, not just an irregular nuisance.

In short: decision-maker silence, reporting-heavy comms, and data errors are the trifecta of disengagement.

Fix them proactively because the clients who stay engaged grow and you’re only driving them positive ROI when they get seen, heard and guided.