When the number of service providers are increasing and government regulations increasingly tightening, it’s becoming difficult for the telecom companies to retain customers. Added with introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) it will be more difficult for the telecom service providers to retain customers. The external environment; social, political, economical and technological changes are happening faster than ever. There are new products, services and new tariffs in the market every two weeks and the customers are getting confused faster than ever. In this confusion there are many customers who change their service providers rapidly.

Lets look at why a customer leave a service over the other service provider? The main reason is price, the more lucrative the price offer the more chances prevail that customers would leave a connection. It’s noticed that 60-80% of the customers leave due to lesser tariffs.

The second main reason is the kind of customer service provided and how customer is treated by the customer support personnel. Many a times when a complain is raised they are not resolved within expected time and customers services representatives are not able to meet the demand and expectations of the customer issue, they just try to close the issue rather than solve it. Hence in frustration customer migrate to other service provider where customer services are better and they are listened carefully. Here frustration is the primary cause of churn.

The third main reason of customer jump to another service provider is the quality of service being provided, for example if there is lot of network disturbances and call drops, a customer would get irritated and look for better service providers which can give disturbance free service. People would go for better quality.

The fourth main reason for the customer churn is the changing technology, the next generation is knowledgeable and fast moving with the trend, they have economic power and want to posses newest and latest features, which can provide them the whole world of features in their mobile. The moment they find that there is something more in another service provider’s features they quickly migrate.

Added with this, the telecom companies are witnessing falling ARPU (average revenue per user). It looks like subprime lending, where an economically poor customer like (milkman, washer man, vegetable vendor, rikshawala, loaders etc;) is given connection without understanding the long term customer profitability to the company. Here a customer takes a connection but makes restricted calls added to this the price is cheaper per call. In this situation, though the customer base is huge they fail to take ARPU higher. The huge customer base itself is economically weaker just like subprime customers in the banking industry.

Where does knowledge management fit in for the telecom companies? Earlier companies were trying to collect, capture, replicate enterprise, employee and business knowledge capital. However, now that customer is the prime asset, companies are trying hard to capture the customer data. Though there are business intelligence tools, one department uses one tool the other another. Whereas knowledge management can be applied through out enterprise through streamlined processes facing customer services area like billing, fault repair, new campaigns, complaints, self service, cross sell and up sell. When knowledge management processes are aligned with the customer processes, companies would be able to understand the customer better and know the customer lifestyle and behavior in a more meaningful way. Once the company understands the customer better it would be able to serve it better. In the scenario of better service customers will remain with the service provider for long. Knowledge management will also allow companies to provide personalized services to the customers, as needs and wants of customers differ from one customer to another.

If companies fail to capture the customer data through knowledge management processes, they would fail to get into the lives of customers and hence fail to provide services suitable to them. The wrong services and messages would only enhance frustration and churn.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Madhu_Bala

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