e organization for handling it. But no, we realize very quickly that churn is an issue of import to absolutely every part of the telco organization. Churn events have impact on, and provide valuable information to every part of the business. Engineering and network management, investor relations and regulatory agency management, marketing, sales, customer service, and billing all play a part, and everyone is affected. A DIFFERENT FRAME OF REFERENCE Is REQUIRED Even the most cursory review of the first seven chapters of this book should prove to even the most skeptical reader that telecommunications churn is an important phenomenon. Clearly, no telco can afford to ignore churn activity because of the severe short- and long-term financial consequences. More importantly, no organization can afford to continue to respond to churn in the haphazard, ill-conceived, and erratic manner that most telcos have followed up until now. What is needed is a different way of looking at churn. What is needed is a framework for understanding churn events that: Takes all of the vagaries and inconsistencies of the cus- tomers' continuously morphing attitudes about the service provider into account; Takes all of the technological and competitive volatility into account; and Structures it within a framework that the people in your or- ganization can understand and work with. Chapter 8 A tall order indeed. What if we were to throw out all the detail and history about churn that we have been considering? What if we were to stop approaching this problem from the same old direction that people have been using for decades? What would an entirely fresh look at this situation be? WHAT ARE You TRYING TO MANAGE? We are assuming that you are reading this book because your organization is facing, or will soon be facing, a serious churn threat in your marketplace and that you would like to figure out what to do about it and how to manage churn. Let's review what we have figured out thus far. 1. The telecommunications industry is founded on churn. T