tly associated with the delivery of the sale. These groups, after all, are only associated with the customer after the sale. The customer never sees them, knows about them, or cares about them until after the decision to subscribe with the firm has been made. For this reason, these functions are, for the most part, considered less important. Chapter 17 THE GREAT CHURN IRONY There is a great irony in this situation. All of the groups in the telco that have power over customers' long-term satisfaction and that are the true caretakers of the customers and their churn decisions are not considered to be part of the main consumer management process that drives the thought process of the firm. The company measures success by headcount and brand awareness and congratulates marketing and sales for delivering the numbers. However, the decision to churn will be made by a customer who gets poor network quality, poor customer service, and a number of other non-sales related reasons. The company has nothing to measure or evaluate the most important part of the relationship. Metrics and Measures for the Non-Critical Functions Basic metrics and measures are required for these groups to define how upper management expects the non-critical customer service, network maintenance, and other customer support groups to perform. Although the business wins customers with the retail model, it tries to maintain relationships and prevent churn using the monopoly model. The metrics that customer service, billing, network maintenance, and these other groups are measured by are usually basic cost-per-customers-served metrics. The groups are expected to address the maximum number of customer contacts as possible with the minimum amount of effort and/or investment. This clearly establishes a situation where churn can become a big problem in the long run. THE RETAIL MODEL, THE PERFECT FORMULA FOR GENERATING MUCH CHURN In fact, an argument could be made that this arrangement of a customer management model is a good way to create a churn-rich situa