There is no question that churn is the plague of the telecom industry. In the mobile business, annual churn rate of 20%-30% are standard. In developing countries, churn can be as high as 60% per annum. Do you know any other industry where companies lose 20%-60% of their customers between the 1st of January and the 31st of December?
High levels of churn are the results of both the supply-side and demand-side peculiarities of telecom service providers. On the supply side, operators engage in intense marketing activities, launching new tariffs, handsets and promotions on a continuous basis to lure end-users to their own service offering. On the demand side, barriers to switch are very low: SIM cards are mostly free, prepaid customers usually do not have to provide much information, and in countries where Mobile Number Portability has been implemented, customers can take their phone number with them to their new service provider.
But if churn is the plague, you don’t have to be fatalistic. Tomorrow’s winners will be service providers that better understand what customers want and better anticipate how customers will behave. This applies to churn as well and raises questions such as: can we forecast which customers are likely to churn in the near future? Can we explain churn? Can we retain customers who are about to churn?
Yes, we can. Churn can be reduced, and should.
Impact of Churn prediction and Micro-campaigning (Source: Investaura, Lumata)
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