In an increasingly competitive environment, customer churn is an important measure of telecom business health.  A high-churning base means expensively gained customers are defecting to competitors, either because they are being tempted by cheaper deals or more innovative services; or because they are being driven away by poor customer service (or a combination of all three).

Churn was once a concept most appropriate to the highly competitive (and highly portable) mobile market, but is now a live issue in wireline environments too as both traditional voice services and new services such as broadband access, IPTV and FMC (fixed/mobile convergence) become highly contested.

Churn can be a business killer, but diagnosing its root causes and designing a customer service strategy to counter it is not easy. Poor customer service may ultimately be the result of a general lack of customer focus throughout the organization and some important  TM Forum  programs are about helping operators make the necessary transition from 'network' to 'service' and customer focus. 

Developing organizational goals and systems aimed at maximizing the 'customer experience' has been another, closely allied area of endeavor.  An important TM  Forum team has been established to develop tools and guidelines for Integrated Customer-centric Management (ICCM) - taking processes, systems and captured customer data and developing strategies using those assets to understand, maximize and continue improving, customer satisfaction. The key to ICCM is that the viewpoint of the customer is the 'starting point' for the development of best practice.
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Storing and accessing accurate and relevant customer data is key to developing the customer-focussed applications designed to reduce customer churn. The TM Forum's SID (Shared Information and Data) initiative is an  important part of its central NGOSS (New Generation Operations Systems and Software). 
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Just as important is to know where you are. The TM Forum's Benchmarking program enables operators to measure and then compare key performance indicators in terms of customer satisfaction with other players 
Click here to learn more about Benchmarking