PlayP07 Growth · Retention · Editorial rank 5 of 12

Prevent profitable addressable churn

Customers leave for potentially fixable reasons, while blanket offers subsidise customers whose behaviour would not change.

Decision: Who should receive which useful intervention, including no treatment?
Primary commercial metric: Incremental retained contribution net of all extra treatment, service and system costs.
Readiness: Basic; uplift Advanced
Agent role: None required; no autonomous invented discounts or pricing.

Fit

When to use this Play

A meaningful at-risk cohort has an addressable cause and an available, legitimate treatment.

When not to use it

The cause cannot be changed, required service must not be withheld, or an incentive merely conceals a persistent product failure.

Why it should work

A suitable repair or treatment may change retention enough to cover its full cost; no treatment can be the best choice.

Basic version

One meaningful cohort, a simple approved rule and proportionate comparator.

Prepare

Required maturity

Basic eligibility and treatment comparison. Ready with identity, cause, permission, outcome history and delivery capacity. Not ready for uplift modelling without adequate treatment evidence.

P01 Establish decision-specific customer economics — Adequate decision-specific economics is required; the whole P01 Play is unnecessary if already satisfied.Check readiness for P07 (D02)

Inputs

Account state, churn definition, cause evidence, contribution horizon, service/offer history, eligibility, contact policy, treatments and costs.

Audience or customer

Eligible accounts with an addressable need; assignment respects account relationships and contact boundaries.

Human role

Lifecycle or Customer owner decides; Service/Product delivers; Finance values contribution; measurement approves inference and Pricing approves offers.

Systems required

Existing CRM/service and billing records, approved treatments and an outcome comparison.

Guardrails

Complaints, fair offers, essential service, contact limits, margin and operational load.

How to configure a Play

Copy the Play you need and complete only the relevant parts of T1–T5. Name the people responsible, define the customer group, agree economic and customer limits, and set a review date before starting. An empty decision threshold is not permission to act. Basic, Connected and Advanced describe how the work is configured; Experimental describes its evidence. AI is optional: compare each AI step with a simpler way of doing the same work.

Do the work

Intervention

Service recovery, product repair, guidance or an approved offer selected for the cause.

Workflow

Verify risk and cause.
Separate mandatory service from optional treatment.
Compare alternatives and no action.
Approve economics and policy.
Assign eligible accounts.
Deliver and log.
Mature outcomes.
Review net treatment value and revise.

AI role

Optional assist Optional summarisation of permitted service evidence; predictive risk remains distinct from causal treatability.

Automation role

Eligibility, current consent, contact caps, assignment, approved CRM delivery and cost/outcome joins.

Agent role

None required; no autonomous invented discounts or pricing.

Failure modes

Risk mistaken for preventability
whole customer LTV booked as saved
discount leakage
extrapolated effect valued at pilot cost.

Measure and decide

Measurement

Compare contribution per assigned eligible account over a sufficient horizon; include treatment costs for everyone treated and delayed churn.

Primary commercial metric

Incremental retained contribution net of all extra treatment, service and system costs.

Leading indicators

Cause resolution, delivery success, appropriate engagement and early service recovery; none substitutes for mature retention.

Experiment

Account-level optional-treatment comparison where legitimate; never withhold required service. Preserve treatment/control denominators and cost scope.

Guardrails

Complaints, fair offers, essential service, contact limits, margin and operational load.

Scale when

Expand only where net effect and uncertainty justify the next treatment tranche and the cause remains comparable.

Stop / reassess when

Stop on harm, negative economics, invalid measurement or unresolved service failure; route mandatory repair to its owner.

Learn and progress

Learning

Cause-by-treatment evidence, no-action performance, total cost, effect interval, customer consequences and expiry triggers.

Practical tool

T2 retention economics, T3 measurement plan and T4 contact contract.

T2 Economics and benefits ledger T3 Decision experiment and evidence record T4 Action authority and operating contract K02 Net intervention value

Next action

identify one preventable churn cause and a non-discount repair.

Open T2 Economics and benefits ledger

Curated next Play

Optional depth

Advanced versionPrerequisites: see Required maturity above.

Validated heterogeneous treatment models and bounded selection among proven treatments; test benefit over cohort rules.

Evidence for this Play4claims reviewed, with confidence ratings, limits and sources.

Claim classifications

Accepted means a principle or mechanism survived critical review, not that it guarantees a return. Accepted with conditions means prerequisites apply. Qualified means the original claim has been narrowed. Advanced needs substantial readiness. Experimental needs a capped comparison. Unresolved means the evidence cannot settle the claim. Rejected means the recommendation is excluded.

High, Medium and Low describe confidence in the stated target, not the chance of a positive ROI. For a Qualified or Rejected historical claim, confidence applies to the decision to narrow or reject it and to the supported limit—not to the original headline. Read the headline and classification together. An accounting identity or design principle is not empirical evidence of a commercial outcome. Follow the linked chapters, Plays and tools to see where each claim applies.