I came across this tweet this morning and it perfectly explains a phenomenon that all customers and employees intuitively understand.
“So: what’s a thermocline? Well large bodies of water are made of layers of differing temperatures. Like a layer cake. The top bit is where all the the waves happen and has a gradually decreasing temperature. Then SUDDENLY there’s a point where it gets super-cold.”
The Trust Thermocline in Products and Services
John Bull’s explanation is straightforward: if you gradually provide less quality for more money, you are gradually eroding your customers’ trust in you as a provider. At some point your customers will lose faith and bail, and it won’t be because of one specific change. It will be due to a breach of faith so bad that leaving or switching to a new provider will be worth the cost.
He explains that this breach is never sudden and silent. Customers complain — everyone on Medium is familiar with this, every time there’s a change in algorithm or interface a multitude of articles come out declaring the end of Medium — but their grumblings are largely ignored by the provider because the customers are still putting money down.