Measuring Churn Drivers and Identifying Retention Opportunities - Mobile Operator Case Study

SUMMARY

This case study covers the experiences of a European Mobile Operator through its journey of establishing churn measurement and improving its customer retention performance. This operator offers both pre and post pay mobile services, and although it is not a market leader, it has over one million subscribers and this base is growing.

The case study takes us through the process of designing the measurement process, and how they learnt valuable lessons through a direct dialogue with a sample of lost or saved customers on a quarterly basis. This showed exactly why customers originally subscribed, why they left and what they went on to do (i.e. substitute operator, service or ceased using mobiles).

It details the issues that emerged as most significant for this operator and how they have gone on to implement improvements in their retention offers as well as scripts and processes used within their Call Centres.

We reveal a number of initiatives that have helped this operator reduce annualised churn from 32% to 24%.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1Overview
  • 1.2 Key Findings
  • 1.3 Facts about the Case Study
• 2 Challenges in Measuring Customer Churn
  • 2.1 Churn definitions
  • 2.2Operator - internal measurements used
  • 2.3 Operator Performance Metrics (How operator measures own retention performance)
  • 2.4 Spend Levels/Patterns
  • 2.5Channels Used
  • 2.6Variance from Main Customer Base
  • 2.7 Involuntary Churners
• 2.8Voluntary churners
• 3Churn Drivers & Inhibitors
  • 3.1 Customer's perception of Gap between expectations and performance
  • 3.2 Push factors - Within Operator's control
  • 3.3 Poor customer service
  • 3.4 Administration/contract issues
  • 3.5 Coverage issues
  • 3.6 Network problems
  • 3.7 Billing
  • 3.8 Handset issues
  • 3.9 Channel issues
  • 3.10 Pull factors - Impact of Actions/pull by Operator's Competitors
  • 3.11 Pull factors - Personal Issues
• 4 Actions to Reduce Churn
  • 4.1 Overview
  • 4.2 Moving towards a "Single View of the Customer"
  • 4.3 Prepaid Predictive Churn Analysis
• 5 Measuring Impact & Performance of Call Centre Operators
  • 5.1 Process issues (How calls are handled/routed)
    • 5.1.1 Specialist Team
    • 5.1.2 Handling Calls with Specialist Team
  • 5.2Efficiency issues (Speed of response, completing on one customer call)
  • 5.3 Performance - when customer calls to terminate
• 6 Actions to Improve Performance of Operators
  • 6.1 Proactive Approaches
  • 6.2 Quality Management
  • 6.3 Relationship Centre
  • 6.4Training & Workshop Sessions
  • 6.5Changing/editing Scripts
  • 6.6Increasing efficiency
  • 6.7 Enhancing Customer Care
• 7 Measuring Potential & Actual Impact of Retention offers
  • 7.1 Handset Offers
  • 7.2 Cash credit
  • 7.3 Free rental
  • 7.4 Offer free calls/texts
  • 7.5 Other Churn reduction strategies
• 8 Gains & Successes - the Impact of Gathering & Using Intelligence
• 9 Overall Conclusions & Lessons Learned