 can help customer service know how many customers will be churning each month is of considerable value. It is not uncommon to find large spikes and dips in churn activity overall. When these spikes and dips can be predicted, the customer service organization can staff up or staff back accordingly, saving much money from their overall customer service budget. Budget Management In the same way that customer service would like to be warned about impending upward or downward activities, SO too would the accounting and budget management organizations. Armed with this kind of predictive information, these groups can prepare more accurate revenue and cost projections and provide upper management with the ability to make more realistic adjustments to the overall business plan for the year. Chapter 15 Raw Churn Numbers And Prepaid Wireless Prepaid wireless, one of the biggest new growth areas in wireless telecommunications, forces planners into a position where they must perform the majority of their predictive planning using only raw numbers, since many times, prepaid activity does not offer the ability to track individual customer activities. The problems of the prepaid wireless managers are very similar to that of a typical retailer where customers have complete freedom to buy or not buy on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Techniques for the Prediction of Raw Churn Numbers Although the specific details about how churn prediction models of this nature are actually calculated is a well-guarded secret in most cases, it is possible for us to at least review some of the logic behind the construction of those models. Assuming the basic prerequisites of available historical information and a stable business environment, the person developing this type of model will perform the following tasks. Mapping the History of Churn Activity The first step in creating these models is developing an accurate understanding of the historical rate of churn. It is here, in the development of this churn history, that problems involved in t