Find out why a customer’s orders have slowed.

Specify whether you are reviewing order count, quantity, net invoiced value, product coverage or time since the last order. These measures can tell different stories. One consolidated order can replace several smaller orders, while a price increase can conceal lower unit demand in a revenue total.

Choose a comparison that matches how the customer buys. A seasonal supplier may need the same operating period from an earlier year. A project business may need the current project phase. Record incomplete periods, delayed imports, cancellations and credits before treating a change as customer behaviour.

Define the review trigger and keep it separate from the conclusion. A longer-than-usual gap can justify checking the account. It does not prove churn, dissatisfaction or intent to leave. The measurement guide explains why the population, denominator and timing must match the claim you want to make.

Check the account, site and product mappings. A customer may have started buying through a central account, a distributor or another site. A product substitution can make the old SKU appear abandoned while the replacement continues to sell. Retain those links so the review does not mistake a record change for lost demand.

Look at the usual order pattern in context: replenishment interval, stockholding, shutdowns, project milestones and one-off purchases. Ask whether the comparison period included an unusually large order. If the customer bought ahead of a planned closure, the quiet period afterwards may need no intervention.

Customer whitespace analysis asks whether a category gap is worth checking. This review asks why known purchasing has changed. Use the two together when helpful, but do not turn every decline into a cross-sell recommendation before understanding the original need.

Bring delivery queries, returns, technical issues, disputes and active conversations into the review. Record their status and owner, with the access appropriate to that information. A sales owner should not need to discover an unresolved service issue by asking the customer to repeat it.

Keep cause and coincidence separate. A late delivery followed by fewer orders is a reason to investigate; it does not establish that the delivery caused the change. A customer statement can strengthen that explanation, but may still describe only part of the decision.

If a service action is already agreed, make its completion the next step. Record the commercial question separately so it does not compete with the repair. The account plan gives the team a place to keep both the relationship context and the owner of the next action.

Use a data repair when the trigger comes from a mapping or import problem. Use a service action when an unresolved issue needs attention. Continue monitoring a known pause when you have defined what would trigger the next review. Prepare a commercial conversation when there is a relevant open question that the account owner can reasonably ask.

Write the action with an owner and a reason. “Customer at risk” is too broad to hand over. “Confirm whether the shutdown has ended; service owner is resolving the delivery query first” gives the next person enough context to coordinate the work.

The buying-signal method treats retention and service observations as part of the same review discipline as new-business signals. A useful system can route a task to service or research as readily as to sales.

Test the rule against accounts with different buying patterns. Include a steady replenishment customer, a seasonal customer, a project account and a known data correction. Ask whether the trigger gave a reviewer useful notice and whether the required context was available.

Keep a short record of the outcome and the reason: mapping corrected, normal buying pause, service issue, changed requirement, confirmed supplier change or unresolved. Review false alarms alongside cases discovered by account owners that the rule missed. Adjust the trigger without pretending that a small sample establishes a universal churn threshold.

Use the monthly commercial review to assess whether the records are reliable and the actions useful. A focused review of order and account data can be a separate assignment, with findings handed to your team. Where those findings guide a customer-outreach campaign, Build includes its agreed research, operation and improvement. Your team, ClarityRev or both can carry out the agreed work. Optional Run continues after a ClarityRev Build; agree the monitoring and review responsibilities it includes.