One of the things I occasionally get paid to do by companies/execs is to tell them why everything seemed to SUDDENLY go wrong, and subs/readers dropped like a stone. Spoiler alert: prevention is the only cure. Follow-up: How do you spot the tipping point? "I don't know. But your customer support people do." tweet 
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They'll be flying along making loads of money, with lots of users/readers, rolling out new products that get bought. Or events. Or Sub-brands.
And then SUDDENLY those people just abandon them.
(story about incremental increase in prices and adding or changing of features where customers keep paying)
Users and readers will stick to what they know, and use, well beyond the point where they START to lose trust in it. And you won't see that.
(Company continues incremental increase in cost and adding and changing features with unseen erosion of trust.)
But they'll only MOVE [at] the point where their lack of trust in the product to meet their needs, and the emotional investment they'd made in it, have finally been outweighed by the physical and emotional effort required to abandon it.
At this point, I normally get asked something like:
"So if we undo the last few changes and drop the price, we get them back?"
And then I have to break the news that nope: that's not how it works.
Because you're past the [tipping point] now. You can't make them trust you again.
Okay, so a few people have asked how you spot the where [the trust tipping point] is, and how to avoid hitting it. I'll give you the same answer I give senior execs:
I don't know.
But the people working on the ground level in the customer-facing sections of your company do. tweet
There's this odd thing where companies with a trust problem start to treat retention as a normalised process. And a 'good' retention rate as an indicator of success.
It isn't.
It means you have growing trust issues with your userbase and are DELAYING your issue, not fixing it.
And 9 times out of 10 the real reason none of that stuff has been addressed before was simply because it was seen as too hard to be worth the effort.
Either [leadership] start realising its worth the effort, or no 6 month consultancy was gonna change their mind.
followup
A few people have asked how you spot where your Trust Tipping point is, and how to avoid hitting it. I'll give you the same answer I give senior execs:
I don't know.
But the people working on the ground level in the customer-facing sections of your company do. /1 Because it's those people that will be picking up on the general vibe of your userbase and their 'grumbles' - i.e. the complaints that the user shoulders internally (mostly) rather than makes directly in feedback.
So its your creators, your community managers, junior sales etc.
But the BIGGEST sign you are at risk of hitting your Trust Tipping Point, if you are a relatively large company, is this:
Do you have a customer retention process? Do you have a sales retention TEAM? Do you have a customer retention DEPARTMENT?
Alarm bells.
There's this odd thing where companies with a trust problem start to treat retention as a normalised process. And a 'good' retention rate as an indicator of success.
It isn't.
It means you have growing trust issues with your userbase and are DELAYING your issue, not fixing it.
Do you know what's really effing fun?
Sticking people who do the retention calls in a room, with a white board, and lots of GOOD food and drink, and getting them to list all the stuff they CONSTANTLY hear but have stopped bothering to report up the chain.
And you record it. Or you just take everything on that list.
And you go:
That's your trust problem right there. However painful it is to your bottom line. However politically tough it is. However complex the problem:
Fix that shit.
Or you don't have a company anymore.
It's basically that old joke about how consultants just tell execs what those on the ground know already.
Which is why I don't do consultancy. I'm happy to just do sessions for senior execs and either they listen and talk to the right people, or were never going to listen anyway
And 9 times out of 10 the real reason none of that stuff has been addressed before was simply because it was seen as too hard to be worth the effort.
Either they start realising its worth the effort, or no 6 month consultancy was gonna change their mind.
.
The original twitter thread leaned on the metaphor of thermocline. I replaced that with tipping point, 'cos I have no direct experience with a thermocline and the metaphor didn't help me make sense of the reasoning. wikipedia