Data Mining Models as a Tool for Churn Reduction and Custom Product Development in Telecommunication Industries

This chapter represents the business case in the telecommunication company called Veza, in domain of churn prediction and churn mitigation. The churn project was divided into few stages. Due to limited budget and cost optimization, stage one was concentrated on prospective customer value calculation model based on fuzzy expert system. This helps Veza company to find most valuable telecom subscribers. It also helped company to better understand subscriber portfolio structure. Developed fuzzy expert system also helped Veza company in detection of soft churn. Stage two is profiling and customer segmentation based on time series analysis which provided potential predictors for predictive churn model. The central stage was concentrated on developing traditional predictive churn model based on logistic regression. This calculated probability that subscribers will make churn in next few months. The final stage was dedicated to SNA (Social Network Analysis) model development which found out the most valuable customers from the perspective of existing subscriber network. This model gave the answer that subscribers have the greatest influence on other subscribers in a way what is dangerous if they leave Veza company because they will motivate other subscribers to do the same thing. All three stages made complete churn detection/mitigation solution which take into consideration past behaviour of subscribers, their prospective value, and their strength of influence on other subscribers. This project helped Veza company to decrease churn rate and it gave directions for better understanding customer needs and behaviour which were the base for new product development.