The vendor-driven market treats account relationships as expendable. Once you're signed, switching costs are high enough that they can afford to deprioritize you. So they do — cycling your account team, slowing down support tickets, stopping innovation for your use case, then using renewal as a moment to ask for more.
You're in an uncomfortable position. You've invested years in this relationship. Your team knows the product. The switching costs are real. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you're wondering whether the problem is them — or whether you're just a difficult customer.
It's them.
The vendor knows you're more likely to tolerate a painful relationship than to go through the disruption of replacing it. That's not an accident. That's the business model.

