tion. An environment that emphasizes the sales and initial attraction of eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook the customer and relegates the follow-up relationship management to a simple "cover as much as you can with as little as possible" is the perfect formula to create a high churn environment. Creation of a churn management department will do little to actually attack the churn problem. Churn is a problem that the entire organization must address. Chapter 18 CHAPTER 18 A TELE-CENTRIC MODEL FOR CHURN MANAGEMENT In the preceding two chapters we provided some alternatives views of how customer relationship and churn management operations are organized and run. We proposed that, along with the operational efficiency of the organization, the consumer response model that the company chooses defines how well the telco is be able to manage customer relationships. We described two of the models most obviously in force in telcos today, the monopoly and the retail models. We also proposed that neither of these models provides an optimum organization of business units to truly address good customer relationship management or churn situations. In this chapter we present what we call the telecentric (telecommunications customer-centric) model, a radically different way of viewing telecommunications missions, functions, and departmental alignments. Our exploration of telecommunication and wireless corporate philosophies, history, assumptions, and operational models has shown us how each has contributed to the creation of the typical telecommunications business structure that we find today. It is easy to see why most telcos manage relationships with customers the way they do and how the basic assumptions of who the customers are and how to manage those relationships has resulted in a headcount- based model. It is also becoming obvious that this model and basic philosophy will not serve the telco of the future very well. eXcellence in Telecommunications The Telco Churn Handbook A NEW MODEL Is CALLED FOR 