tart to pick up in your marketplace, the market momentum and position that you have established can easily be changed (for the better or for the worse.) When aggressive churn begins to happen, it means that consumers are reconsidering their earlier decisions about who the best carrier is. And this open- mindedness can be translated into, not only incremental shifts in market position but also momentous shifts. History has shown, again and again, that, when churn conditions are prevalent, major shifts in relative market position can occur quite easily. Making Radical Changes in Profitability Along with an opportunity to significantly improve your market position, there is another opportunity that is even more important (though much more subtle). For most carriers, the process of starting up business, getting competitive, and fighting to survive has resulted in the creation of a customer portfolio that includes many customers that are of little or no value. In fact, some carriers have actually been misled into believing that they were gaining big market share, only to find that their competition was off-loading bad customers onto their acquisition campaigns. What churn situations provide you with is an opportunity to reevaluate your customer portfolio and develop a strategy that allows you to "swap" with your competition. You give them your bad customers and take some of their good customers - clearly, a much better long-term solution. Making Radical Changes in Corporate Culture and Org. Structure There is yet another, even more significant and subtler benefit to be gained by aggressively addressing churn issues. Churn gives you the opportunity to reexamine the fundamental nature of your organization itself. By forcing you to grapple with the complex, unprecedented issues that churn creates, it provides you with the perfect opportunity to reexamine the assumptions that you made when you first put your organization together and, hopefully, helps you realize some more effective ways to operate in the future. eXcellen