ndeterminate, nebulous group of customers known as the public, but looks to ascertain how well segments are being managed in the long-term for wallet share, acquisition, and loyalty dimensions. eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook Chapter 20 CHAPTER 20 REPORTING ABOUT CHURN Thus far, we have focused mainly on the more strategic, theoretical, and high-level aspects of churn management. Now, we are finally ready to deal with the more tactical characteristics. In this chapter, we begin with the most fundamental and critical of tactical churn management issues: reporting churn to the organization. Without accurate and meaningful churn reporting, no one will be able to do very much about churn. Churn management and the development of effective churn management approaches can be a large, complicated task that requires a great deal of sophistication on the part of the organization. However, many organizations fail to realize that, if they do not put the basic information reporting systems in place to identify and measure the churn as it occurs, then all of the strategic thinking and sophisticated planning is for nothing. A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO CHURN DIAGNOSIS There are several techniques for accurately assessing a churn situation. Some of the most popular, proven techniques include the following: 1. Understanding the current saturation for your products and services in your marketplace. eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook 2. Recording and reporting the raw churn headcount numbers for your organization (past and present). Defining standard definitions for the types of churn that you want to track. Creating the mechanisms that capture the reasons why cus- tomers churn. 5. Creating reports that communicate the past and present churn numbers by segment, churn type, sales channel, bill code (tariff), and other criteria. These steps provide a guide for developing an effective and accurate analysis of churn. STEP 1 - DETERMINE THE CURRENT MARKET SATURATION Understanding the current 