create market awareness, and in other ways deliver results that impact the bottom line for the firm. To deliver those results as quickly and efficiently as possible, they need to be able to constantly reevaluate whom they are dealing with and what they are offering. Any attempt on the part of upper management to hamper the business units' ability to deliver those results will be counterproductive. In the process reevaluating who their customers are and which groups are most likely to respond to certain appeals the units will undoubtedly end up with a constantly shifting population of customers to be targeted. This, unfortunately, means that there is high likelihood that a customer is treated differently each time a new campaign activity is run. Herein lies the heart of the CRM problem. How do you create a framework that allows each customer touchpoint organization to do its job as efficiently as possible and at the same time make sure that eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook the constantly shifting targeting will not disenfranchise? We have a classical short-term return versus long-term value tradeoff. How do you allow business units to maximize the short-term success they can obtain through the constant reevaluation of customers and objectives without damaging the long-term relationship? Many telcos have tried to develop base segmentation approaches, but the efforts often failed for a number of reasons. The answer is simple: create a default base segmentation that becomes the benchmark against which all other customer relationship management activities must be measured. This default segmentation can then provide the baseline consistency in treatment that you want to accomplish for the customers within each segment, while at the same time allowing business units to explore as many possibilities as possible. Base Segmentation As an Activity Constraint and Guideline The base segmentation scheme becomes your means to assure that customers that are important to the firm overall are as such by al