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PlayP08 Growth · Expansion, usage, win-back and referral · Editorial rank 10 of 12

Grow relevant customer and account value

Relevant customer needs remain unmet, or expansion activity increases transactions without net account contribution.

Decision
Which relevant next proposition or action increases net account contribution while meeting a genuine customer need?
Primary commercial metric
Incremental account contribution after all additional acquisition, offer, delivery and operating costs.
Readiness
Basic
Agent role
None by default; novel dynamic research requires its own P10 comparison.
01

Fit

When to use this Play

Evidence identifies a useful complementary product, capacity need, usage opportunity, addressable win-back cause or satisfied referral cohort.

When not to use it

Product fit is weak, supply is constrained, customer benefit is unclear or rewards mainly subsidise existing behaviour.

Why it should work

A relevant intervention can create additional useful usage or relationships, net of substitution and delivery costs.

Basic version

One needs-based cohort and a human-approved relevant intervention using existing systems.
02

Prepare

Required maturity
Basic account-level economics and eligibility. Ready with a specific need and treatment. Not ready if product interactions or account assignment cannot be understood.
P01 Establish decision-specific customer economics — Adequate decision-specific economics is required; the whole P01 Play is unnecessary if already satisfied.Check readiness for P08 (D02)

Inputs

Need/state, product holdings, usage, satisfaction, available capacity, eligibility, contribution, cannibalisation, reward and service costs.

Audience or customer

Eligible existing accounts; lapsed accounts with addressable causes; satisfied advocates where referral is the selected variant.

Human role

Commercial/Product owner decides; Sales or Lifecycle executes; Service confirms capacity; Finance and method partners review value.

Systems required

Existing CRM, product/commerce, account and service systems; approved offer and workflow records.

Guardrails

Suitability, trust, stock/capacity, contact policy, offer fairness, fraud and future churn.

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.

03

Do the work

Intervention

One variant: useful usage guidance, suitable cross-sell/upsell, cause-specific win-back or a controlled referral offer.

Workflow

  1. Confirm customer need.

  2. Choose one variant.

  3. Calculate account-wide economics.

  4. Approve eligibility and terms.

  5. Assign treatment/comparator.

  6. Deliver through native tools or human selling.

  7. Assess substitution, retention and contribution.

  8. Decide.

AI role

Optional assist Optional verified account research, needs synthesis and approved sales-preparation drafts; no autonomous outreach volume target.

Automation role

Eligibility, account-level assignment, contact suppression, approved delivery, fraud flags and outcome joins.

Agent role

None by default; novel dynamic research requires its own P10 comparison.

Failure modes

  • Affinity mistaken for incremental response
  • existing demand shifted between products
  • referral codes treated as causality.
04

Measure and decide

Measurement

Account-wide assigned-population contribution, including switching, displaced purchases, repeat churn, rewards and added support.

Primary commercial metric

Incremental account contribution after all additional acquisition, offer, delivery and operating costs.

Leading indicators

Useful adoption, qualified conversation, customer fit, fulfilment and relevant usage; avoid reward submissions as success.

Experiment

Account-level holdout for suitable optional treatments; lower-volume B2B uses a qualified design and longer horizon, without false precision.

Guardrails

Suitability, trust, stock/capacity, contact policy, offer fairness, fraud and future churn.
Scale when
Repeat only when the need and total account economics remain valid in the next cohort and delivery can absorb demand.
Stop / reassess when
Stop if cannibalisation, complaints, fraud or service cost erodes net value; pause on unsuitable treatment.
05

Learn and progress

Learning

Need-to-treatment fit, substitution effects, customer acceptance, treatment cost and evidence scope.

Practical tool

Next action
select one unmet need before choosing the expansion channel.
Open T1 Intervention and investment card
06

Optional depth

Advanced versionPrerequisites: see Required maturity above.

Validated treatment selection across several products when sufficient outcomes and account interactions can be modelled.

Evidence for this Play2claims 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.