Getting customers to shift their value between suppliers is particularly difficult when the service is binary - when customers either have to be 100 per cent with one supplier or another. This is one reason why customers have not moved between power suppliers after deregulation as much as was first thought. In many markets, higher value customers are often harder to shift, even if they seem the most likely to profit by it. One reason for this may be that any saving is less significant in relative terms - the well-off individual who can save $100–200 a year on electricity may not find the game worth the candle, compared to the poorer user who might switch for a $40 saving.

An interesting version of this problem is where individual customer value grows over time - typically because income rises with age and so customers buy higher value products. This applies in many areas - for example cars, financial services, travel and telecommunications. Here, the question for the attacking company is whether it can get a good share of the higher value business without having the customer from the beginning. The answer to this is - yes. Indeed, banks have discovered to their cost that having lots of loss-making student customers is not much use if they switch suppliers as soon as they become valuable. For the attacking company, the switching proposition is usually based on excellent value for money, because the incumbents can't give such good value because of the cross-subsidies required to sustain the loss-making early-stage customers.

The defence strategy in this case is to be so good at retaining value as customers become more valuable that there is no need to recruit as many customers at the loss-making or low value stage. More selective early-stage customer recruitment, combined with better prediction of which customers have more value available, and when they will have it available, is now becoming the central plank of many companies' customer management strategy. This requires predictive modelling, usually based on events and transactions, as it is the latter that indicate rising value. Of course, it is also important to make sure that the company's products and services, people, processes and systems are attuned to managing this value towards it.