It reads like a line about customer service. It is a line about your ears.

A complaint is expensive to make. The customer has to notice the problem, decide you are worth telling, and risk an awkward minute at your counter. Every complaint is a vote that you can still be fixed.

Silence costs them nothing. That is why it is the more common verdict.

Picture a kopitiam, the neighbourhood coffee shop where the regulars have standing orders. One uncle tells the drinks stall every morning that his coffee is too sweet. The owner rolls her eyes and keeps the sugar where it is.

One week he stops saying it. She takes the quiet for peace.

The week after, he is buying his coffee two stalls down.

Your version is harder to see.

The client who used to send long replies now sends "noted". The colleague who argued in every meeting now nods. The reader who wrote back twice a month has not opened an email since July.

None of them announced they were leaving. They stopped spending effort on you first, and the money followed later.

The work is to treat a drop in complaints as a warning light, not a reward. Count who has gone quiet, not who is still shouting.

So today: pick the three people who used to push back and have not in a month. Send each one question before noon — "what would you change if it were yours?"

The loud ones are still yours. Go find the quiet ones.